






* ^ 














» ° *$> 4* c$ . ♦ • , ^ 





^ J 




°o 







^ 











K 
























• » ° w «^ 



4^ *o»c° ^ 



V^V V-" 




*•* A^ O *°** 



.v* 



MIND-READING 



Co 



BEYOND 



BY 



WILLIAM A. HOVEY 




I MAR 2 ! 



BOSTON 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 
1885 



y-h 






Copyright, 

1885, 

By Lee and Shepard 



All Rights Reserved. 



MIND-READING. 



EEECTROTYPED BY 

C. J. Peters and Son, Boston. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



" From the recorded testimony of many competent witnesses, 
past and present, including observations recently made by scien- 
tific men of eminence in various countries, there appears to be, 
amidst much illusion and deception, an important body of re- 
markable phenomena which are prima facie inexplicable on any 
generally recognized hypothesis, and which, if incontestibly 
established, would be of the highest possible value." 

This statement is found on the opening page of the first volume 
of the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (London), 
published in 1882. The Society grew out of a conference held in 
London, Jan. 6, 1882, and was definitely constituted on the 20th 
of February following. A programme for future work was at once 
sketched out by the Council of the Society, in pursuance of which 
the following subjects were entrusted to special committees : — 

I. An examination of the nature and extent of any influence 
which may be exerted by one mind upon another, apart from 
any recognized mode of perception. 

II. The study of hypnotism, and the forms of so-called mes- 
meric trance, with its alleged insensibility to pain ; clairvoyance, 
and other allied phenomena. 

III. A critical revision of Reichenbach's researches with cer- 
tain organizations called "sensitive," and an inquiry whether 
such organizations possess any power of perception beyond a 
highly exalted sensibility of the recognized sensor}' organs. 

IV. A careful investigation of any reports, resting on strong 
testimony, regarding apparitions at the moment of death, or 

1 



2 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

otherwise, or regarding disturbances in houses reputed to be 
haunted. 

V. An inquiry into the various physical phenomena commonly 
called Spiritual ; with an attempt to discover their causes and 
general laws. 

VI. The collection and collation of existing materials bearing 
on the history of these subjects. 

The Society declared that it was its aim to approach these 
various problems "without prejudice or prepossession of any 
kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry 
which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not 
less obscure, nor less hotly debated." 

Considering the nature and scope of the work undertaken by 
this Society, it becomes interesting to know who compose it and 
who are its leading spirits. Professor Henry Sidgwick, of 
Trinity College, Cambridge, is President. There are a number 
of Vice Presidents ; among them, Professor W. F. Barrett, 
F.R.S.E., of the Royal College of Science, Dublin ; the Bishop 
of Carlisle ; Professor Lord Rayleigh, F.R.S., of Cambridge ; 
and Professor Balfour Stewart, F.R.S., of the Owens College, 
Manchester. The Honorary Members are Professor J. C. 
Adams, LL.D., F.R.S., of the Cambridge (England) Observa- 
tory ; Professor Ruskin, LL.D., D.C.L. ; William Crookes, 
F.R.S. ; Lord (Alfred) Tennyson ; Alfred Russell Wallace, 
F.R.G.S.; and G. F. Watts, R.A. Nicholas M. Butler, of 
Columbia College, New York, and Rev. Dr. E. P. Thwing, of 
Brooklyn, are named among the Corresponding Members. 
The list of members includes four hundred names, in which the 
learned professions are very largely represented, the nobility by 
no means infrequent, and the gentry abundant. An examina- 
tion of this list will convince any one at all familiar with the 
names of people prominent in science, in law, in the church, in 
medicine, in the army, in literature, or in any other leading walk 
in life in England, that this Society is made up of, and controlled 
by, as much genuine scientific ability and integrity as any 
learned body in the kingdom. It seems necessary to dwell 
upon this fact, because, in America, the investigation of these 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 3 

alleged phenomena has, so far as the public has been aware, 
been in the hands of persons utterly unfitted for scientific 
research, the greater number of them ignorant enthusiasts, and 
not a few practising deliberate swindling for purposes of gain. 
In England the work seems to have fallen into hands which 
may fairly be presumed to be competent, and which certainly 
are honest ; and its results possess a value with w 7 hich that of 
the desultory, fragmentary, and wholly disconnected efforts put 
forth in this country bear no comparison. 

In his address at the first general meeting of the Society, 
Professor Sidgwick, 1 the President, noting the fact that some 
question had been raised as to the need of such an organization, 
gave expression to an idea that must have occurred to many, 
although no one had, perhaps, previously reduced it to exact 
form. He declared it to be nothing less than a " scandal " that 
the dispute as to the reality of these alleged phenomena should 
still be going on, that so many competent witnesses should 
have declared their belief in them, that so many should be 
profoundly interested in having the question determined, and 
yet, that the educated world, as a body, should still be in the 
attitude of incredulity. And he went on to say that the true 
aim of the Society was and should be to remove this scandal in one 
way or another, to get at the actual facts, and make them known 
to the w r orld. That this should be the aim of all honest investi- 
gation, scientific or otherwise, will not be questioned. It cannot 
concern itself with results until they are attained. Its conclusions 
derive their value from the fact that they cannot be foreseen by the 
investigators. The great object is to get at the Truth, and cer- 
tainly Truth is something which no one need be ashamed to seek. 

1 From this point on, this opening chapter is practically a compilation of 
the addresses made by President Sidgwick, at the several meetings of the 
Society in 1882-84. In many cases his exact words have, in newspaper 
phrase, been "run in." I have ventured to inject a few ideas and sugges- 
tions of my own, but they form an unimportant and trivial part of the whole. 
The authorship of this chapter fairly belongs to Professor Sidgwick; my 
part of the work is simply a matter of selection, arrangement, and connec- 
tion, — in a word, a piece of editing. — W. A. H. 



4 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

It was asked at the outset, by persons by no means unfriendly 
to the work which the Society proposed undertaking, " Why 
should this attempt succeed more than so many others which 
have been made during the past thirty years ? " To this ques- 
tion, a natural and legitimate one, there are several answers. 
The first is that the works must and will go on. Investigation 
will be continued, if not by organized, then by individual effort. 
The matter is far too important to be left where it now is. 
Indeed, considering the importance of the questions still in 
dispute, as compared with other scientific problems on which 
years of patient and unbroken investigation have been em- 
ployed, it may be said that no proportionate amount of labor 
has yet been devoted to these problems. Even were it granted 
that previous efforts had completely failed, that would still be 
no adequate reason for not renewing them. But it cannot be 
admitted that previous efforts have completely failed. The 
most that can be said is that they have not completely succeeded. 
Much important evidence has been accumulated, valuable ex- 
perience has been gained, and very important effects have been 
produced upon the public mind. 

Just here it is in place to make mention of a criticism that was 
made at the time the Society began its work, a criticism which 
tended to place its w r ork in a somewhat invidious light. It was 
assumed that the Society intended to throw aside the results of 
all previous inquiry as untrustworthy, and that the founders 
arrogated to themselves a superior knowledge of scientific 
method or intrinsically greater trustworthiness, and that they 
hoped and expected to be believed, whatever their conclusions 
might be, although previous inquirers had been uniformly dis- 
trusted. The Society makes no such assumption. It does not, 
it cannot, assume that it can produce evidence better or more 
reliable than much that has been laid before the public by men 
of unquestioned scientific repute, but it may justly hope by con- 
tinued effort to produce much new evidence, and it holds to the 
opinion that a great deal more evidence is desirable. It may 
be true that, as some claim, there has long been sufficient evi- 
dence to convince reasonable people who have taken pains to 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 5 

consider it ; but it is certainly no less true that the educated 
world, including many who have given much time and thought 
to the study of these phenomena, are by no means convinced as 
yet, and, for this reason, more evidence is wanted. Again, — 
and this is a point of prime importance, — it is not enough to 
establish the fact that certain phenomena do occur. That is 
but a small part of the work. If they do occur, a very impor- 
tant, an all-important thing, is to ascertain the laws which 
govern their occurrence. In this way science gets at the subject 
considered, and forms a groundwork for its study. If we know 
more of electricity to-day than we did a hundred years ago, it is 
because thousands of experiments have been tried by competent 
persons, and from these have been deduced laws which are 
found to govern and limit the action of this form of force. 
What electricity is, as expressed in terms commonly understood, 
we do not know. The same may be said of heat and of light, 
but, because the existence of electricity, heat, and light are 
admitted, shall the investigation of phenomena dependent upon 
them, and the laws which govern them, come to an end ? 

Again, it is asked, " If more evidence is required, how much 
more?" This is a question that cannot be answered in exact 
terms. The work of accumulating, sifting, and comparing evi- 
dence must continue until the scientific world is satisfied. 
Scientific men are, very properly, slow to accept the truth of 
phenomena which seem to be outside of. all known law. It is 
of the utmost importance that scientific men should demand, in 
every case, the most rigid proof, and that they should refuse to 
believe until every reasonable doubt is removed. Of course 
they may carry this to an unreasonable extreme, and, as a mat- 
ter of fact, they often do. But even this is better than that they 
should be too willing to believe, and accept upon insufficient 
and unreliable evidence. A longer stride than is generally 
supposed has already been taken. Says Professor Sidgwick, — 

" Thirty years ago it was thought that want of scientific cul- 
ture was an adequate explanation of the vulgar belief in mes- 
merism and table-turning. Thus, as one man of scientific repute 
after another came forward with the results of individual 



6 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

investigation, there was quite a ludicrous ingenuity exercised 
in finding reasons for discrediting his scientific culture. He 
was said to he an amateur, not a professional ; or a specialist, 
without adequate generality of view and training ; or a mere 
discoverer, not acquainted with the strict methods of experi- 
mental research ; or he was not a Fellow of the Royal Society, 
or, if he was, it was by an unfortunate accident. Or, again, 
national distrust came in. It was chiefly in America that these 
things went on ; or, as I was told myself, in Germany, some 
years ago, it was only in England, or America, or France, or 
Italy, or Russia, or some half-educated country, but not in the 
land of Geist. Well, these things are changed now; and though 
I do not think this kind of argument has quite gone out of use, 
yet, on the whole, it has been found more difficult to work, and 
our obstinately incredulous friends, I think, are now generally 
content to regard the interest that men of undisputed scientific 
culture take in these phenomena as an unexplained mystery, 
like the phenomena themselves. Then, again, to turn to a dif- 
ferent class of objectors, I think, although I do not wish to 
overrate the change, that the attitude of the clergy has sensibly 
altered. A generation ago the investigator of the phenomena of 
spiritualism was in clanger of being assailed by a formidable 
alliance of scientific orthodoxy and religious orthodoxy ; but I 
think that this alliance is now harder to bring about. Several of 
the more enlightened clergy and laity who attend to the state 
of religious evidences have come to feel that the general princi- 
ples on which incredulous science explains off-hand these mod- 
ern marvels, are at least equally cogent against the records of 
ancient miracles, that the two bodies of evidence must, prima 
facie, stand or fall together, or at least must be dealt with by the 
same methods. Then, again, a generation or two ago we were 
told to go to the conjuror, and told that we should see that the 
whole thing was conjuring. I quite think that this direction was, 
to a great extent, just and important. It is highly desirable that 
the investigation of these matters should be carried on by men 
who have tried to acquaint themselves with the performances of 
conjurors. But we can no longer be told, off-hand, that all the 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 7 

marvels recorded by Mr. Crookes, Professor Zollner, and others, 
are easy conjuring tricks, because we have the incontrovertible 
testimony of conjurors to the contrary. They may be conjuring 
tricks, but they are, at any rate, tricks which conjurors cannot 
find out." 

For the reasons summarized above, and those given in the 
extract from Professor Sidgwick's address, it may fairly be said 
that matters are now more favorable for an impartial reception 
of the results of careful and thorough investigation, so far as 
success is had in obtaining positive results, than at any previous 
time. It is not to be denied that a great amount of evidence 
has been accumulated to show that a great part of the phenom- 
ena generally attributed to spiritual agency are really, in whole 
or in part, due to fraud or deception of some kind. This is part 
of the experience which past experiment has furnished, and it is 
of the utmost importance. But because many counterfeit bank- 
notes are in circulation, it does not prove that no genuine ones 
exist. In fact it rather tends to prove that genuine ones do 
exist, and that, for want of the real article, imitations are substi- 
tuted. And it is partly because the true is mixed with the false, 
the counterfeit with the genuine, that it is desirable that careful, 
thorough, and disinterested investigation should be made by 
competent persons, in order that the wheat may be sifted from 
the chaff. 

"As regards the question of credibility," says- Professor Sidg- 
wick, " the important point to bear in mind is that every addi- 
tional witness who, as Dr. Morgan said, has a fair stock of credit 
to draw from, is an important gain. Though his credit alone is 
not likely to suffice for the demand that is made upon it, his 
draft will help. For we must not expect any decisive result, in 
the direction at w T hich we primarily aim, on the common sense of 
mankind, from any single piece of evidence, however complete 
it has been made. Scientific incredulity has been so long in 
growing, and has so many and so strong roots, that we shall only 
kill it, if we are able to kill it at all as regards any of those 
questions, by burying it alive under a heap of facts. We must 
keep ' pegging away,' as Lincoln said ; we must accumulate fact 



8 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

upon fact, and add experiment on experiment, and, I should say, 
not wrangle too much with incredulous outsiders about the con- 
clusiveness of any one, but trust to the mass of evidence for 
conviction. The highest degree of demonstrative force that we 
can obtain out of any single record of investigation is, of course, 
limited by the trustworthiness of the investigator. We have 
done all that we can do when the critic has nothing left to allege 
except that the investigator is in the trick. But when he has 
nothing else left to allege, he will allege that." 

It may be taken as the avowed purpose of the Society to bring 
no evidence before the public that has not been brought to this 
pitch of cogency. This is proper on many grounds, and one 
chief ground is this : It is due to the private families or private 
circles of friends who have allowed the members of the various 
committees to take part in their experiments, not to leave the 
subject of the phenomena — when the committee has, by its own 
methods of investigation, become convinced of the genuineness 
of the phenomena — to bear alone the injurious suggestions of 
critics who may find it needful to attack the experiments. The 
only honorable course open to the Society, in such cases, is to 
stand strongly by those of whose honesty it is satisfied, and to 
drive the objector either to admit the phenomena as actual, al- 
though inexplicable, at least by him, or to accuse the investigators 
of lying or cheating, or of a blindness or forgetfulness incom- 
patible with any intellectual condition other than hopeless idiocy. 

When the report of the proceedings of the first meeting of the 
Society was made public, much discussion, public and private, 
took place. Of course there was a great deal of criticism, the 
greater part of it beneath notice, because utterly unintelligent. 
There was more or less unmitigated ridicule, especially in a cer- 
tain class of highly respectable papers ; but, as it is the rule with 
the press, in England as well as in America, to ridicule that which 
it does not comprehend, — the London " Times " scorned the 
idea that the telephone could ever be anything more than an in- 
genious and interesting toy, — no one paid much attention to it. 
In the " Pall Mall Gazette," however, appeared an article in a 
more serious strain. It urged its readers to abstain from inquir- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 9 

ing into ghost stories, on account of the dangerous tendency to 
give them credence, which, on the principles of evolution, must 
be held to exist in our brains. Owing to the many generations 
of our ancestors, argued the " Pall Mall," who believed in spir- 
its, we retain in our nervous mechanism " innumerable connec- 
tions of fibres," which will be developed into superstitious beliefs 
if we give them the slightest opportunity. Our only chance is 
to starve these morbid fibres, by steadily refusing them the slight- 
est nutriment in the way of apparent evidence. We must " keep 
clear of the pitch " of superstition if we would avoid defilement. 
" The scientific attitude can only be maintained by careful ab- 
stention from dangerous trains of thought. " 

The reply of Professor Sidgwick to this view of the case was 
forcible and characteristic. At the second general meeting of 
the Society he said : — 

'•When I read this article I seemed to remember having 
heard something like it many years ago, only not quite in the 
same language, and then it flashed across me that this was the 
exact counterpart of the dissuasions which certain unwise de- 
fenders of religious orthodoxy, a generation ago, used to urge 
against the examination of the evidences of Christianity. They 
told us that, owing to the inherited corruption of the human v 
heart, we had a proneness to wrong belief, which could only be 
resisted by ' steadily neglecting to develop ' it ; that we must 
keep clear of the pitch of free-thinking if we would avoid defile- 
ment ; that, in short, the religious attitude can only be preserved 
by careful abstention from dangerous trains of thought. And I 
remembered the generous and sincere indignation with which 
our scientific teachers then repudiated these well-meant warn- 
ings, as involving disloyalty to the sacred cause of truth, and a 
degrading distrust of the God-given reason of man ; with what 
eloquence they urged on us to maintain our privilege of free 
and unfettered inquiry, to keep our minds impartially open to 
all evidence from all sources, and follow our reason whither- 
soever it led, at whatever sacrifice of long cherished conviction ; 
and I thought how the whirligig of time brings round his 
revenges, and how the new professor is ' but old priest writ 
larger' in a brand-new scientific jargon." 



IO MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Another class of objectors to the investigations were those who 
were willing to believe that the phenomena had actual existence, 
but thought it a waste of valuable time for " superior persons " to 
establish them. They thought the evidence of thought-reading 
really strong. They saw no reason why there should not be brain 
waves, or something of that sort. In fact, they had themselves 
seen and taken part in experiments which seemed to confirm 
the idea. As for apparitions at the moment of death, they had 
always believed that there was something in that, but they 
could not see why educated people should be concerned about 
it, and, in fact, believed and felt, and felt strongly too, that it 
would be far better for them to give the time to writing a com- 
mentary on Plato, or studying the habits of beetles or earth 
worms, or in some such way making a really valuable contribu- 
tion to science or learning. Fortunately for the Society, it did 
not have to devote time to this objection. Another body of its 
critics, the incredulous scientists, did not for one moment 
question the stupendous importance of the conclusions, if only 
they could believe it possible to establish them, and they ad- 
mitted that a man would indeed be fortunate who could hope, 
in any department of recognized science, to light upon a new 
truth of anything approaching equal importance. So one set of 
antagonists was set against another, and they were left to fight 
it out. One believed the phenomena true, but unimportant, 
while the other believed them untrue, but, if true, of the highest 
possible importance. 

Criticism was naturally aroused by the broad range marked 
out for the Society's work. Some critics, not unfriendly, said 
that if the investigation had been confined strictly to mind or 
thought reading, to clairvoyance, and, perhaps, to the different 
forms of mesmeric sleep, their countenance would not have been 
withheld, but that, by taking in haunted houses, spirit-rapping, 
and so forth, the members of the Society really made themselves 
too absurd. Doubtless, a certain amount of ridicule might 
have been avoided by limiting the scope of the investigation in 
some such way, but it could only have been avoided at the 
expense of C9nsistency. It is to be observed that it does not 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. II 

follow that all these phenomena must stand or fall together, or 
that proving the phenomenon of thought-reading tends in any 
way to prove the existence of ghosts. But the Society holds 
that the general presumption of established science against the 
possibility of thought-reading, or clairvoyance, is so strong 
that it could not be much stronger against any other class of 
alleged facts ; and therefore, if it were judged reasonable to 
disregard it in the former case on account of the strength of the 
testimony to actual instances of thought-reading, etc., it would be 
palpably inconsistent to refuse investigation in other cases in 
which the quantity and quality of the testimony were such as 
would be conclusive in any matter of ordinary experience. 
That the testimony to the so-called haunting of houses was 
strong enough to establish a case for investigation on this prin- 
ciple, appeared to the Society incontrovertible. Again, it is to 
be remembered that not a few investigators have been of 
opinion that very many phenomena alleged to be spiritual, 
are in reality explainable as growing out of mind-reading, 
clairvoyance, or mesmerism, and hence it is of the highest 
importance that actual phenomena, called spiritual, should 
be critically examined to see whether they can or cannot 
be shown to have an origin less mysterious than that to which 
they are ascribed. 

It is only just to the Society that its claim to be a truly scien- 
tific body, and to carry on its work in a scientific spirit, and by 
scientific methods, should be understood. Some have urged 
that this pretension was absurd, on the ground that any success 
in establishing the truth of the alleged phenomena would be a 
hard blow for science. Quite the reverse is the fact. It is true 
that the agreement of experts is the final test of truth, and that, 
so far as the great majority of experts is concerned, up to the 
present time, their agreement is not favorable to the truth of the 
phenomena. But what an eminent statesman said of the political 
world may, perhaps, be applied to the scientific world — the 
main duty of a minority is to become a majority, not, perhaps, 
by antagonism and direct controversy, but by patiently and per- 
sistently endeavoring to apply to these obscure matters, methods 



12 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

as analogous as circumstances allow to those by which scientific 
progress has been made in other departments. 

What is meant by " scientific spirit," or rather what the 
Society means by it, is this : Its aim is to approach the subject 
without prepossession or prejudice, favorable or unfavorable, 
" but with a single-minded desire to bring within the realm of 
orderly and accepted knowledge what appears as a chaos of 
individual beliefs." In claiming that its methods are scientific, 
it does not pretend to possess any peculiar or exclusive knowl- 
edge or art, needing special elaborate training. " Science," as 
an eminent naturalist has said, " is only organized common 
sense ; " and on ground so new as that upon which the Society 
is seeking to advance, the organization of common sense — that 
is, of scientific method — must necessarily be very rude and ten- 
tative. The fact is, that the value to the Society of the eminent 
scientific experts among its members depends very much less 
on any technical knowledge or skill in experimentation than on 
the general habit of mind — the " higher common sense" — 
which their practice of scientific investigation has given to 
them ; greater readiness and completeness in perceiving consid- 
erations and adopting measures which, when once suggested, 
are not only intelligible, but even obvious, to the common sense 
of mankind at large. 

For instance, nothing can be more obvious than the need of 
making as systematic and extensive a collection of facts as 
possible ; partly in order to establish as fact what, it is believed, 
can only be established by such an accumulation of evidence; 
and partly in order to obtain by classification a general view of 
the leading characteristics of the facts, so that the work may be 
started in a right direction for investigating their conditions. 
But this need does not seem to be thoroughly understood. 
Thus, a representative of the intelligent public told the Society 
that it had, after its first year's work, given facts enough, and 
that the intelligent public demanded a satisfactory theory of 
them. The "intelligent public" will probably have to restrain 
its impatience for some little time to come, a restraint which 
ought not to be difficult, considering the length of time for 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 3 

which it has remained in a state of contented ignorance on these 
subjects. Again, a person who sent to the President a valu- 
able first-hand narrative of thought-transference at a distance, 
thought it needful to apologize, on the ground that the Society 
" must be inundated 'with these stories." It is in one sense true 
that the Society was inundated ; the stream of them kept and 
keeps flowing in more strongly than was anticipated ; but it 
desired to be still more inundated, feeling that the tide could 
not rise too high for its purposes. 

It will naturally be understood that, during the course of the 
experiments, critics were not wanting who stood ready to ex- 
plain the phenomena by the operation of well-known laws. It 
is due to the Society to say that every such suggestion, however 
flippantly made, received due attention, resulting, in some cases, 
in the adoption of special precautions to avoid the source of 
error indicated. For instance, before coming to its conclu- 
sions as to thought-transference, the Society considered care- 
fully the arguments brought forward for regarding cases of 
so-called "thought-reading" as due to involuntary indications 
apprehended through the ordinary senses ; and the conclusion 
was reached that the ordinary experiments, where contact was 
allowed, could be explained by the hypothesis of unconscious 
sensibility to involuntary muscular pressure. Hence, special 
importance was attached to experiments in which contact was 
excluded ; with regard to which this particular hypothesis is 
clearly out of court. 

Again, in the case of Faraday's well-known experiments on 
table-turning, no doubt Faraday rendered a real public service 
in preventing ignorant persons from supposing an unknown 
force required to explain the turning round of a drawing-room 
table when a group sit down to it at an evening party. And if 
the eminent physicist had been able to explain in the same 
simple and effective way the rarer, but yet strongly-attested 
cases in which tables are reported to have moved without con- 
tact, or to have risen altogether off the ground, he would have 
really " exploded the whole nonsense " of table-lifting. But it 
is not a scientific way of dealing with a mass of testimony to 



14 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

explain what you can, and say that the rest is untrue ; it shows 
no " scientific spirit/' it is not common honesty. 

When a man pays a sum of money to attend a spiritualistic 
exhibition in a room over which the recipient of the money has 
absolute control, it is reasonable to attribute to preparation and 
sleight-of-hand whatever of the results could be produced by a 
professional conjuror on his platform ; but it is not, therefore, 
equally probable that similar results in a private dining-room 
are due to the hitherto latent conjuring powers of the house- 
maid. When a man goes to a house which he believes to be 
haunted, it is not a noteworthy fact that he dreams of a ghost ; or, 
if he lies awake at night in a nervous condition, it is not strange 
if he mistake the rattle and sigh of the wind for evidence of 
ghostly visitants. But it is not, therefore, proper to class as 
" expected " apparitions for which the seers are wholly unpre- 
pared, and which they at first take calmly for their relatives. 
When a marvellous story is told after dinner by a person who 
heard it from a friend of the cousin of the man who was actually 
there, we may reasonably suppose that an indefinite amount of 
thrilling detail has been introduced in the course of tradition, — 
especially if the links in the chain of tradition are supplied by 
persons who are not accustomed to regard scientific accuracy as 
important in these matters ; but it is not, therefore, legitimate to 
explain in this way a narrative w 7 hich is taken direct from the 
diary of the original eye-witness. It may ultimately be possible 
to show that the whole mass of evidence presented under each of 
these heads is clearly explicable by causes which all will admit 
to be natural : but this result cannot be attained without a more 
careful and patient examination of the evidence than most critics 
deem it worth w r hile to give. 

For the purpose, then, of the examination undertaken by the 
Society, its primary endeavor is to collect phenomena, where 
explanations like those above mentioned have at least a high 
degree of improbability. In no single case can the admissibility 
of such explanations be absolutely excluded, not even in the case 
of the Society's most conclusive experiments, when regarded 
from the point of view of the outside public. All records of ex- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 5 

periments must, as has before been intimated, depend ultimately 
on the probity and intelligence of the persons recording them, 
and it is impossible for any investigators to demonstrate to 
persons who do not know them that they are not idiotically 
careless or consciously mendacious. They can only hope that, 
within the limited circle in which they are known, either alter- 
native will be regarded as highly improbable. 

The facts concerning the growth of belief in the existence of 
what is known as the mesmeric state should have weight with 
those who flippantly deny in toto the existence of many of the 
phenomena which the Society has undertaken to investigate. 
The mesmeric evidence of a generation ago, which, undoubtedly, 
failed to satisfy orthodox medical opinion at the time, should be 
carefully reconsidered. The fact is now universally admitted, 
that, in the controversy which took place from 1840 to 1850 
between the mesmerists and the accredited organs of medical 
opinion, the latter were undoubtedly, to a great extent, wrong. 
They repudiated sweepingly an important part of the phenom- 
ena reported by the mesmerists, which no instructed person 
now denies to be genuine. No instructed person now questions 
the genuine reality of the hypnotic or sleep-waking state as a 
special abnormal condition of the human organism, in which the 
hypnotized person is, in a peculiar way, subject to delusions 
suggested to him from without, and can, in some cases, be made 
as perfectly insensible to pain as he can by inhaling chloroform 
or laughing gas. But, at the time named, the " Lancet " and 
other medical organs refused to admit the genuineness of these 
phenomena, as decidedly as any of them now refuses to 
admit the reality of community of sensation. When the most 
painful surgical operations were successfully performed in a 
hypnotic state, they said the patients were bribed to sham in- 
sensibility, and that it was because they were hardened impos- 
tors that they let their legs be cut off and large tumors be cut 
out without showing a sign even of discomfort. At length this 
unbelief, in all but the most bigoted partisans, gave way before 
the triumphant success of Mr. Esdaile's surgical operations 
under mesmerism in the Calcutta hospital, and hence, when 



1 6 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

subsequently a German professor [Heidenhaim] reported that 
he had obtained results similar to Braid's, — which had been 
previously neglected, — orthodox medical science willingly al- 
lowed the hypnotic state to take a recognized place in physio- 
logical works. The existence, indeed, of a peculiar rapport 
between the mesmeriser and his patient — such as the transfer- 
ence of sensation manifests, — has still the weight of medical 
authority against it ; but this weight is surely diminished by the 
fact that it was so long and obstinately thrown into the wrong 
scale as regards the hypnotic state generally. 

It is claimed by many that persons who expect to induce a 
belief in these peculiar phenomena should submit evidence that 
can be repeated at will ; that they must refuse to entertain the 
idea of " rare, fitful, and delicate " phenomena which cannot be 
reproduced at will in the presence of any number of skeptics. 
But there has not been any serious attempt to justify this refusal 
on general principles of scientific method. The phenomenon of 
thought-transference — assuming it to be genuine — depends, 
prima facie, on the establishment of a certain relation between 
the nervous systems of two persons ; and as the conditions of 
this relation are specifically unknown, it is to be expected that 
they should be sometimes present and sometimes absent, in 
some unexplained way ; and, in particular, it is to be expected 
that this peculiar function of the brain should be easily dis- 
turbed by mental anxiety or discomfort of any kind. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. IJ 



II. 

For several years prior to submitting their first report to the 
Society, July 17, 1882, the members of the committee on what 
is variously called mind-reading, thought-reading, or thought 
transference, had been gathering evidence on the obscure but 
important question of supersensnous sensation. Stray facts, met 
with from time to time in the course of their observations, or 
related to them by competent witnesses, led them to doubt the 
sufficiency of the popular physiological explanations to account 
for all cases, and encouraged them to persevere in an inquiry 
which they stated in the following form : — 

Is there, or is there not, any existing or attainable evidence, that 
can stand physiological criticism, to support a belief that a vivid 
impression or a distinct idea in one mind can be communicated 
to another mind without the intervening help of the recognized 
organs of sensation. And if such evidence be found, is the im- 
pression derived from a rare or partially developed and hitherto 
unrecognized sensory organ, or has the mental precept been 
evoked directly, without any antecedent sense percept. The 
nature and the laws of this direct action of mind on mind would, 
of course, form a subject of prolonged subsequent discussion 
and inquiry whenever the evidence in its favor had accumulated 
sufficiently. The committee says : — 

The present state of scientific opinion throughout the world is 
not only hostile to any belief in the possibility of transmitting a 
single mental concept, except through the ordinary channels of 
sensation, but, generally speaking, it is hostile even to any inquiry 
upon the matter. Every leading physiologist and psychologist 
down to the present time, has relegated what, for want of a bet- 
ter term, has been called thought-reading, to the limbo of 
exploded fallacies. Dr. W. B. Carpenter, whose name and 
distinguished contributions to the science and literature of physi- 
ology command universal recognition and respect, finds in the 



1 8 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

so-called thought-reading a striking confirmation of views he has 
long advocated, that the " communications are made by uncon- 
scious muscular action on the part of one person, and automatic- 
ally interpreted by the other." Where collusion does not come 
into play, all that Dr. Carpenter has ever seen or heard rests upon 
the "intermediation of those expressional signs which are made 
and interpreted alike unconsciously." Dr. H. Maudsley, in his 
"Pathology of Mind," takes the same view as Dr. Carpenter, 
treating the subject as hardly worthy of serious refutation. 
Collusion, hallucination, unconscious interpretation of uncon- 
sciously imparted signs, furnish, according to the physiologists 
of to-day, abundant explanation of the phenomena under inves- 
tigation. 

Twelve months ago, the performances of Mr. Irving Bishop 
having attracted considerable attention, a small committee of 
distinguished men investigated the matter, and after a few and 
rather hastily conducted experiments, a report, approved of by 
the other members of the committee, w r as drawn up by Mr. G. J. 
Romanes, and published in " Nature " for June 23, 1881. The 
report indicates that one member of the committee, Professor 
Ray Lankester, absolutely refused to countenance the idea of 
thought-reading, and objected to the other members — Professor 
Croom Robertson, Mr. F. Galton, and Mr. Romanes — giving 
even a fair trial to " so puerile a hypothesis." The trial was, 
however, made, and the result is thus stated : " From these ex- 
periments, it is needless to say, we did not anticipate any results ; 
but, with the exception of Professor Lankester, we thought it 
worth while to make them, not only because Mr. Bishop seemed 
to desire it, but also to satisfy the general public that we had 
given the hypothesis of 'thought-reading,' as well as that of 
'muscle-reading/ a fair trial." 

Mr. Stuart Cumberland has obtained considerable notoriety 
by experiments somewhat similar to those of Mr. Bishop, but his 
performances have no sort of relationship to our experiments, as 
he expressly disclaims thought-reading, and denies the possibility 
of obtaining any results without contact. Mr. Bishop, on the 
other hand, professes to obtain results without contact, but the 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 9 

experiments for which he makes this claim are never obtained 
without the very closest proximity, nor without accompaniments 
of needless flurry and excited pantomime, which are eminently 
calculated to distract and mislead the attention. 

Mr. Bishop's and Mr. Stuart Cumberland's performances are 
in some respects identical with those exhibited, some years past, 
by a Mr. Corey, and others, in America. In a paper read before 
a scientific body in Detroit, and published in the Detroit Review 
of Medicine for August, 1875, Dr. T. A. McGraw describes as 
follows the method followed by Mr. Corey in his experiments : 
11 Bringing himself," says Dr. McGraw, " into direct physical 
contact with some person, Mr. Corey was enabled to discover 
objects which that person had secreted, and to select from a 
multitude of objects the one upon which the wilier was intent. 
All his performances were but variations upon these two strings. 
A hidden object was found, or a person, letter, or figure, was 
picked out from a crowd of others. He usually brought himself 
into contact with his subject by grasping the subject's hand, and 
applying it to his own forehead, but sometimes placed his own 
hand also on the brow of his companion." The writer proceeds 
to show that Mr. Corey's tests (like most of those of Mr. 
Bishop and Mr. Cumberland) are only ideas which can be 
expressed by the simplest kind of action. " He cannot detect 
any kind of an idea in such a way as to express it first by 
speech. Thus he cannot tell directly the date of a coin, nor 
can he discover it in any other manner than by choosing out 
the figures which represent it from among others on a table." 
It is obvious, as the writer goes on to say, that most of the 
actions "could be explained by the perception, by a trained 
operator, of involuntary and unconscious muscular movements." 

" I myself," he continues, " experienced this tendency to 
involuntary action, when trying to carry out fairly one of Mr. 
Corey's tests. The object of the search in this case was the 
date of an old coin, and the operator was trying to discover it 
by choosing from among the figures on the table those of the 
proper date. While keeping my attention fixed on a certain 
figure, I became all at once aware that I was actually trying to 



20 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

force the hand of my associate towards it, so powerfully did the 
thought impel to the correspondent action." 

Notwithstanding this, Dr. McGraw does not believe the 
explanation he has just given covers all the phenomena he 
witnessed, for he adds : " It seemed to me that there were 
features in these exhibitions which could not be satisfactorily 
explained on the hypothesis of involuntary muscular action, 
for . . . we are required to believe a man could unwillingly, 
and in spite of himself, give information by unconscious and 
involuntary signs that he could not give under the same circum- 
stances by voluntary and conscious action. ... It seems to me 
there is a hint towards the possibility of the nervous system of 
one individual being used by the active will of another to accom- 
plish certain simple motions. There would be nothing inherently 
impossible in this when we recollect the strong similarities that 
exist between nervous and electrical forces ; and as we know, it 
is possible to generate induced currents of electricity in coils 
of wire that are near to a primary electric coil ; so we can 
imagine the nervous current to be continued into [induced in ?] 
another body, and act there upon the automatic centres of action. 
. . . The whole matter, however, needs as yet the most careful 
investigation before the phenomena can even be accepted as 
genuine." 

Dr. Beard, of New York, professes to have supplied this need, 
and in various papers — on " Trance," on the "Scientific Basis 
of Delusion," on the " Physiology of Mind Reading," etc., — pub- 
lished in the American "Popular Science Monthly "for 1876, 
1877, and 1879, has, according to the high authority of Professor 
Croom Robertson (Nature, July 14, 1881), "given a varied 
record of facts, and a series of carefully drawn conclusions." 
We have carefully read what Dr. Beard has written, and failed 
to find much more than a singular exhibition of self-assertive- 
ness ; coupled with a marked disregard of many eminent names 
in the past and present records of scientific inquiry. Dr. Beard 
tells us that after incredible labor he has discovered six sources 
of error, open to all who experiment with living human beings. 
"All of these errors are to be recognized, and systematically, 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 21 

and, if possible, simultaneously guarded against, if our results 
are to command the confidence and homage of science." 

These six sources of error are as follows : — 

i. The phenomena of the involuntary life in both the experi- 
menter and the subject, — embracing under this head trance, as 
well as all actions below the plane of consciousness. 

2. Unconscious deception on the part of the subject experimented 
on, which appears to be a particular instance of the general 
statement given in the first error. 

3. Intentional deception on the part of the subject ; experiments 
must be made without any regard to the moral character of the 
subject. 

4. Unintentional collusion of third parties, — meaning, by this, 
bystanders or assistants, seen or unseen ; to avoid this, the 
experiments must be made privately, or the audience kept abso- 
lutely silent. 

5. Intentional collusion of third parties, i. e., assistance de- 
signedly given ; difficult to guard against, for, as Dr. Beard 
remarks, intentional and deliberate deception is more common 
among the better classes than is generally imagined. 

6. Chance and coincidences. Concerning this last, Dr. Beard 
remarks that the only way to eliminate this error is by making 
comparative experiments with all the sources of error removed 
except chance. " In this way," he continues, " it was shown 
that mind-reading, so-called, was really muscle-reading. In the 
researches I made on muscle-reading, it was shown over and 
over that by pure chance only the blindfold subject would, under 
certain conditions, find the object looked for in one case, and 
sometimes in two cases, out of twelve." 

The first two sources of error are considered the most fre- 
quent and fatal, and, to guard effectively against them, " two, 
and only two, things are considered needful : one is a general 
knowledge of the phenomena of the involuntary life, and the 
other is so to deceive the subject experimented on that this in- 
voluntary action of his mind or body cannot ccme in and destroy 
the experiment." 

But may not the experimenter himself be deceived by his 



22 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

foregone conclusions ? In fact, we venture to think Dr. Beard 
and others have omitted one source of error more fatal to ac- 
curacy in interpreting the results obtained than perhaps any 
other. We allude to the strong prepossessions with which the 
subject is approached, a prejudice which concludes against their 
possibility, and which, if it does not preclude inquiry, destroys 
all calmness and impartiality in viewing the facts. It is unde- 
niable that a strong mental bias in one direction is as objection- 
able on the side of skepticism as on the side of credulity. In 
either case it tends (i) to explain the facts in accordance with 
the mental bias, which may be erroneous ; (2) to produce an 
actual mental disturbance, either perceptible or imperceptible, 
which in delicate mental operations may really be as fatal to 
their success as slight air disturbances in the indications of a 
galvanometer, or the introduction of a trace of a magnetic metal 
in the reading of a magnetometer. 

Hesitation in accepting any facts so novel, and, in many 
ways, suspicious, as mind-reading, is, of course, perfectly justifi- 
able ; and we are quite prepared to expect much criticism and 
prolonged experiment, before any generalization from the facts 
can meet with wide acceptance. Our own researches have now 
extended over a period of several years, and we have witnessed 
phenomena of more or less interest in a great variety of subjects. 
Broadly speaking, these phenomena may be grouped under the 
following heads : — 

I. Where some action is performed, the hands of the operator 
being in gentle contact with the subject of the experiment. 

II. Where a similar result is obtained with the hands not in 
contact. 

III. Where a number, name, word, or card has been guessed 
and expressed in speech or writing, without contact, and appar- 
ently without the possibility of the transmission of the idea by 
the ordinary channels of sensation. 

IV. Where similar thoughts have simultaneously occurred, or 
impressions been made, in minds far apart. 

I. Whenever the hands are in contact, or even communicate 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 23 

by a tense cord with the subject of the experiment, it is almost 
impossible to exclude giving faint indications to the guesser, 
which with a sensitive subject are interpreted into a sense of 
Tightness or wrongness that ultimately may lead them to the 
hidden object, "the communication," as Dr. Carpenter remarks, 
" being made by unconscious muscular action on the part of 
one person and automatically interpreted by the other." The 
most familiar illustration of this is to be found in the willing 
game, which may be described in Dr. Carpenter's words, as 
follows : " Several persons being assembled, one of them leaves 
the room, and during his absence some object is hidden. On 
the absentee's re-entrance, two persons who know the hiding- 
place stand, one on either side of him, and establish some per- 
sonal contact with him, one method being to place one finger on 
the shoulder, while another is for each to place a hand on his 
body. He walks about the room between the two ' willers/ and 
generally succeeds before long in finding the hidden object, 
being led towards it, as careful observation and experiment 
have fully proved, by the involuntary muscular action of his 
unconscious guides, one or the other of them pressing more 
heavily when the object is on his side, and the finder as invol- 
untarily turning toward that side." l 

This well-known explanation doubtless accounts for very 
much that is witnessed in family circles, and which goes under 
the name of thought-reading. At the same time there is a diffi- 
culty in applying it to those cases wherein the subject has fre- 
quently failed to accomplish a simple task, and yet has accurately 
done a much more complicated one, often with singular prompt- 
ness and decision. 

The members of the Committee conducted a series of experi- 
ments which come under the first head, that is, with contact 
between the person " willing " and the person doing the thing 
" willed." The following is the account of these, as given by 
Professor W. F. Barrett, Professor of Physics in the Royal Col- 
lege of Science, Dublin : — 

1 Carpenter's " Mesmerism, Spiritualism," etc., p. 54. 



24 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

The first case is a sample of the ordinary willing game, that 
came under my notice in Easter, 1877. 

Expt. 1. — The subject in this case was a young medical man, 
and the friends present were mostly medical men, skeptical of 
the operation of any agency beyond involuntary muscular action. 
The experiments were made in the house of a distinguished 
surgeon, Mr. Lawson Tait. A paper-knife was placed by myself 
on the top of a folding screen, during the subject's absence from 
the room. On recalling him, two friends clasped hands round the 
subject's waist ; he then closed his eyes, walked irresolutely to 
the spot, and took off the paper-knife, placing it on the table. 
Here involuntary guidance to the spot may be assumed, but it is 
difficult to understand what should have made him lift up his 
hands, suddenly, and feel for an object out of sight. No indi- 
cation of w r hat was to be found was given beforehand. 

Expt. 2. — The same subject again left the room, one of the 
number ascertaining that he was quite beyond eye or ear shot. 
This time we willed that he should move the fire-screen, and 
double it back. On re-entering, my host, the surgeon, clasped 
him as before, and after a few moments of indecision he went 
towards the spot, and did as we had wished. 

Expt. 3. — This time we fixed that the subject should turn out 
the gas of a particular bracket, one of several round the room. 
Loosely held round the waist, the subject in a few minutes went 
to the spot, lifted up his hands, and turned off the gas. 

These three experiments are of interest, inasmuch as in each 
one the hands had to be lifted up, muscles being used distant 
from the part in contact with the willers. Similar results were 
obtained in July, 1877, with Miss R. as the subject. One exam- 
ple will suffice. 

Expt. 4 — During the absence of the subject, it was agreed 
that a mark should be made with a pencil round a sixpence, 
which happened to be lying near a sheet of paper, on the table, 
before the subject left the room. In this case the hands of the 
willers were placed round Miss R.'s neck, and the action fixed 
upon silently willed. In a few moments Miss R. walked to the 
table, took up a pencil, and deliberately made a mark round the 
sixpence. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 2$ 

A long series of experiments, extending over several days, in 
May, 1879, were made by me with another subject. In this case 
the sister of the lady seemed to have the most power over her. 
Among numerous trials that were made, the following may be 
quoted. 

Expt. 5. — In her absence, the subject was willed to take up a 
little agate jewel-box, standing with some twenty other small ob- 
jects on a shelf, put it inside a certain covered jar in another 
part of the room, reopen the jar, remove the ornament, and hand 
it to one of the friends present. This was done swiftly and cor- 
rectly, to the smallest detail. 

Expt. 6. — Selected notes on the piano were four times in suc- 
cession correctly struck. Here, and in Expt. 5, the hands 
gently touched the head. In some of the next experiments the 
hands did not actually touch. 

Expt. 7. — Certain books, in a bookcase (containing some one 
hundred volumes), were chosen by me in the absence of the sub- 
ject. In six consecutive trials the right book was taken down. 

Out of a total of one hundred and thirty trials with this sub- 
ject, of which the foregoing are fair samples, about one hundred 
were correctly performed. Instead of giving the details of all 
these experiments, I may be permitted to summarize them by 
saying that, while in very many cases the muscular sense might 
have been a sufficient explanation, there were many others very 
carefully tested, which could not easily be so explained, and 
which pointed in the direction of something new — such, for 
example, as mind-reading — as their only satisfactory explanation. 
In fact, the intervention of a second person, who was entirely 
ignorant of what had to be done, between the wilier and the 
subject, the hands of each resting on the shoulders of the one 
in front, did not seriously interfere with the results obtained. 
Under such conditions difficult things were correctly clone, 
involving complicated muscular actions, whilst we failed to do 
similar, and even much simpler, things under the influence of 
deliberate conscious guidance. 

Besides these cases, we have received evidence of similar 
performances in private families in different parts of England, — 



26 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

at Southampton, Southport, Cirencester, Yarmouth, Cork, Edin- 
burgh, Glasgow, Norwich, etc. In all these cases we are greatly 
indebted to our informants, to whom we have given considerable 
trouble in correspondence ; but none of these cases were of such 
a nature as to justify a personal visit, and, moreover, the hy- 
pothesis of muscle-reading might, prima facie, be taken to 
account for many of them. Two cases, however, one in London 
and one on the south coast, seemed deserving of more careful 
inquiry. In these, as in all the other cases recorded, the sub- 
jects freely placed themselves in our hands, a kindness we desire 
gratefully to acknowledge, regretting the unrequited trouble we 
have given them. 

The case in London — that of Miss C. — has been investigated 
by each of the members of the committee on thought-reading. 
Here is the record of four typical experiments, made by Mr. 
Myers on Nov. 30 and Dec. 7, 1877. 

" The mother of the young lady placed three of her fingers, 
not including the thumb, on the back of Miss C.'s head, the 
fingers resting apparently quite lightly. 

" Expt. 1. — I drew on a piece of paper a rough sketch of a 
house, and showed the sketch to Mrs. C. Miss C.'s head was 
averted the whole time, no look was interchanged between her 
and Mrs. C, no other part of their persons was in contact. No 
one but Mrs. C. saw the drawing. I watched Mrs. C.'s fingers 
closely, in full gaslight, they seemed to rest lightly on Miss C.'s 
head ; no signals perceptible. The drawing was rudely repro- 
duced, as though by a person drawing in the dark, one of the 
windows being drawn outside the outline of the house. 

" Expt. 2. — I wrote a sentence, and showed it to Mrs. C, 
taking care that Miss C. should not see it. Miss C. then wrote 
it under the same conditions as above. I chose sentences in 
foreign languages, that guidance might be less easy. 

Tu regere imperio. 
Se dejb prender. 

These were correctly written. 

"Expt. 3. — Miss C. then pushed up her sleeve. Mrs. C 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 2*] 

placed three fingers on Miss C.'s arm, above the elbow, and in 
like manner Miss C. wrote (without having previously seen the 
words), — 

Palma. 

This man. 

" Expt. 4. — The Greek words fteOv and «>«? were then writ- 
ten, under the same conditions. They were very rudely written, 
but each letter was distinguishable." 

Notwithstanding these surprising results, we were convinced 
that, granting the hypothesis of involuntary muscular action, and 
of extreme sensibility on the part of the subject, the probably 
unconscious, and certainly undiscernible, movements of the 
touching fingers might possibly serve to convey a sufficient 
guidance to the girl's delicate skin and responsive organization, 
even though she might be unaware of her own response. 

The other somewhat similar case that reached me was on the 
south coast, and here also Mr. Myers visited the family and 
reported as follows : — 

Notes of Experiments with the Misses B., Oct. 31, 1877. 

Miss M. B., henceforward called M. 
Miss R. B., „ „ R. 

I put my hand on M.'s shoulders. I thought of what I wished 
her to do, and told nobody, except in Experiments 5, 6, 15, and 16. 

Expt. 1. — I wished her to take a very small ornament from 
the chimney-piece — a little china cat an inch high. As soon 
as my hands were on her shoulders she rushed to the chimney- 
piece, so quickly that I had difficulty in keeping my hands on 
her, and instantly picked up the cat, which was inconspicuously 
placed among many ornaments. 

Expt. 2 & 3. — Two failures followed ; she said she felt strong 
but confused influence. 

Expt. 4. — I wished her to go to a book of photographs — 
one of several in the room — open it, and pause at a certain 



28 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

photograph. She rushed quickly to the book and opened it, 
but became confused. 

Expt. 5. — Mr. B. took one end of a stick, and M. the other. 
M. took a strap from a table and gave it to a lady at some dis- 
tance, — the test agreed on while M. was out of the room. 

Expt. 6. — A thread was substituted for the stick. M. moved 
an object previously agreed on — an umbrella in corner of room; 
but this time after a good deal of hesitation and fumbling. 

Expt. 7. — I put my hands on R.'s shoulders and willed her to 
pick up and eat a biscuit from a plate in corner of room. She 
at once picked up a biscuit, but did not eat it. 

Expt. 8. — I willed her to shake hands with her mother. She 
rushed to her mother and stroked her hands. 

Expt. 9. — I willed her to pick up grape from bunch. She 
rushed to grapes and picked a few up. 

Expt. 10. — I willed her to pick up a hat in distant part of 
room. The instant my hands touched her she turned sharply 
round, rushed to the hat, and picked it up. 

Expt. n. — A similar wish failed. 

Expt. 12. — I willed her to nod. She stood still and bent 
her head. 

Expt. 13. — I willed her to clap her hands. She did nothing. 

Expt. 14. — I willed her to strike on the piano tenth note 
from right-hand end. She did so after a few seconds' fumbling. 
As I had opened the piano, she might guess I wished her to go 
to the piano, but she could not surmise the right note to strike. 

Expt. 15. — Eight persons present contributed trifling articles 
— a half-crown, two pencil-cases, small knife, key, handkerchief, 
two small purses. These were put in the pocket of a lady pres- 
ent, while R. was out of room. R. re-entered room ; M. touched 
her shoulders. R. rushed to the lady who had the objects, 
pulled them out one by one, and with shut eyes gave each to its 
owner — M. withdrawing her hands during part of the process, 
which was extremely rapid. R. said she did not know to whom 
she was giving the things ; had no sense of connection between 
the things and the people — merely an impulse to move first one 
way and then another. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 2Q 

Expt. 1 6. — I wrote the letters of the alphabet on scraps of 
paper. I then thought of the word CLARA and showed it to 
M. behind R.'s back, R. sitting at the table. M. put her hands 
on R.'s shoulders, and R. with shut eyes picked out the letters 
CLARV — taking the V apparently for a second A, which 
was not in the pack — and laid them in a heap. She did not 
know, she said, what letters she had selected. No impulse had 
consciously passed through her mind, only she had felt her 
hands impelled to pick up certain bits of paper. 

This was a good case as apparently excluding pushing. The 
scraps were in a confused heap in front of R., who kept still 
further confusing them, picking them up and letting them drop 
with great rapidity. M.'s hands remained apparently motionless 
on R.'s shoulders, and one can hardly conceive that indications 
could be given by pressure, from the rapid and snatching manner 
in which R. collected the right letters, touching several letters 
in the course of a second. M., however, told me that it was 
always necessary that she, M., should see the letters which R. 
was to pick up. 

Mr. B. said that M. used at one time to write automatically 
the thoughts of persons sitting near her — though quite uncon- 
scious of what these thoughts were — the hand being moved 
without any perceptible influence on the brain. 

Nov. i, 1877. — On a second visit similar phenomena oc- 
curred, with one new and instructive experiment, viz. : — 

Expt. 17. — M. held one end of a stick, and R. the other. I 
showed M. certain words which I thought of, behind R.'s back ; 
R. then picked out letters, with the hand which was not holding 
the stick, from a confused pile. She made the words correctly. 
When a thread was substituted for the stick she failed to do so. 

Other experiments were subsequently made with this family 
by two members of our committee. But, marvellous as were 
some of the things done, nevertheless had we no other case than 
this to rely upon, I do not think we should be justified in call- 
ing in the aid of any new hypothesis to explain the phenomena ; 
in fact, the last experiment shows that in some cases true 
thought-reading certainly was ?iot the cause of the success 



30 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

attained. I may here observe that our President and Mrs. 
Sidgwick, who made somewhat similar experiments with two 
other ladies, arrived at the conclusion that all the results wit- 
nessed by them personally were capable of explanation by the 
hypothesis of unconscious perception of unconscious muscular 
indications. Mrs. Sidgwick writes : " They certainly did very 
wonderful things, but they did not succeed in any, even very 
simple, experiments w r hich appeared completely to exclude the 
muscular hypothesis, except after several attempts. My brother 
and I both found that with the hands of one of the sisters on 
our shoulders, we could succeed in doing things fairly well, 
though slowly ; not, however, by feeling any impulse to do any- 
thing, but by concentrating our minds on the hands, and trying 
to make out from them whether their owner w r as satisfied or 
dissatisfied. In this way he succeeded, e.g., in selecting the 
desired card from a number on a table. We found that the 
close attention necessary for success was assisted by closing 
the eyes. I should add that I discussed the theory of uncon- 
scious muscular action with the Misses X., but they did not 
think it would account for either their own sensations or some 
experiments they had succeeded with in their own family circle." 

On the other hand it must be admitted that some of the 
results obtained by Mr. Myers would be far more easily ex- 
plained by thought-reading, if that were once recognized as a 
vera causa, and the following prior experiments w T ith the same 
ladies, sent to me by an eye-witness, — whose integrity I have no 
reason to doubt, — seem quite beyond any power of muscle- 
reading. 

Sept., 1876. Expt 1. — Miss B. seated at the table, with her 
eyes bandaged, and a pencil in her hand. I stood behind 'her; 
no word was spoken. I took my spectacles and held them in my 
hand ; she w r rote " Spectacles ; " then my dog-w 7 histle ; after this 
a key ; then a pencil ; all these she wrote down correctly. 

Expt. 2. — The same young lady, M. B., seated at the table 
with her eyes bandaged, pencil in hand. Her uncle, standing 
about twelve feet distance, asked, "Whatw r ord am I thinking 
of ? " M. B. wrote " Homo," This was right. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 3 1 

Expt. 3. — My daughter, who had recently returned from a 
visit to her brother at his vicarage, asked M. B. (who was again 
seated with eyes bandaged, and pencil in hand), " Who preached 
at my brother's church last Sunday evening ? " the answer to the 
question being known to my daughter only. M. B. wrote the 
first six letters of the name, viz., " Westmo — " and then said, " I 
feel no more influence." My daughter said, " Lean your head 
against me." M. B. did so, and then wrote the rest of the 
name, making it quite right — " Westmore." 

Expt. 4. — My daughter then asked her the following ques- 
tions : " What is the name of the hotel I was staying at in Paris 
last month ? " This was answered correctly. " The name of 
the opera I heard ? " Also answered correctly. 

We come now to the second class : where actions are per- 
formed without contact with the person willing. Under this head 
the committee say : Here the involuntary guidance by the 
eyes of the rest of the party, or other indications of an almost 
imperceptible character, are swiftly and probably unconsciously 
interpreted by the guesser, and lead him, hesitating, to do what is 
being willed. The doubtful interpretation of the best results 
obtained in this group compelled the committee, who were deter- 
mined never to give the phenomena, as such, the benefit of any 
doubt, to attach comparatively little importance to them. 

The third group covers cases where some number, word, or 
card, has been guessed apparently without any of the ordinary 
means of communication between the wilier and the guesser. 
Under this head the committee says : — 

Though the errors arising from muscle-reading or involuntary 
guidance are here avoided, there are other sources of conscious 
or unconscious illusion to be guarded against. Collusion is one 
of the most obvious; and any one who has witnessed what can 
be done by a code of signals, such as is employed by Mr. 
Bishop, or Mr. Heller, or Mr. Heriot with " Louie," will 
naturally distrust all observations where two particular persons 
are necessary for the results obtained. Imperceptible informa- 
tion may be given by one who knows the words selected, by 



32 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

means of the Morse code used in electric telegraphy, the long 
and short signs being readily communicated by sight, sound, or 
touch, as may be found requisite. And where collusion is out 
of the question, an obvious danger lies in low whispering, or 
even soundless movement of the lips ; whilst the faintest accent 
of approval or disapproval in question or comment may give a 
hint as to whether the effort is tending in the right direction, 
and thus guide to the mark by successive approximations. Any 
exhibition of the kind before a promiscuous company is nearly 
sure to be vitiated by one or other of these sources or error. It 
is obvious, in fact, that precision can only be attained by re- 
peated experimentation in a limited circle of persons known to 
each other, and amenable to scientific control. 

In the correspondence received there was one case which 
seemed, upon inquiry, to be free from any prima facie objections, 
and apparently indicative of true thought-reading. It was that 
of a family in Derbyshire, with whom the committee had the 
opportunity of frequent and prolonged trials. This family 
resided in Buxton, and was that of a Mr. Creery, a clergyman of 
unblemished character, and whose integrity had, it so happened, 
been exceptionally tested. He had a family of five girls, rang- 
ing, at that time (1882), between the ages of ten and seventeen, 
all thoroughly healthy, as free as possible from morbid or 
hysterical symptoms, and in manner perfectly simple and child- 
like. The father's account of the origin and nature of the 
experiments which were tried in the privacy of his home, as 
read to the Society for Psychical Research, is as follows : 

In the month of October, 1880, my attention was called to 
the phenomena of the " willing game," but being unable to de- 
termine how much of the results was due to simple willing, and 
how much to involuntary pushing, I resolved to thoroughly 
investigate the whole question of the action of mind on mind. 
For this purpose I employed four of my children between the 
ages of ten and sixteen, all being in perfectly robust health, and 
a maid-servant, about twenty years of age. Each went out of 
the room in turn, while I and the others fixed on some object 
which the absent one was to name on returning to the room. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 33 

After a few trials the successes preponderated so much over the 
failures that we were all convinced there was something very 
wonderful coming under our notice. Night after night, for 
several months, we spent an hour or two each evening in vary- 
ing the conditions of the experiments, and choosing new sub- 
jects for thought-transference. We began by selecting the 
simplest objects in the room ; then chose names of towns, names 
of people, dates, cards out of a pack, lines from different poems, 
etc. ; in fact, any things or series of ideas that those present 
could keep steadily before their minds ; and when the children 
were in good humor, and excited by the wonderful nature of 
their successful guessing, they very seldom made a mistake. I 
have seen seventeen cards, chosen by myself, named right in 
succession, without any mistake. We soon found that a great 
deal depended on the steadiness with which the ideas were kept 
before the minds of " the thinkers," and upon the energy with 
which they willed the ideas to pass. Our worst experiments 
before strangers have invariably been when the company was 
dull and undemonstrative; and we are all convinced that, when 
mistakes are made, the fault rests, for the most part, with the 
thinkers, rather than with the thought-readers. 

I may say that this faculty is not by any means confined to 
members of one family ; it is much more general than we imag- 
ine. To verify this conclusion I invited two of a neighbor's 
children to join us in our experiments. On the first evening 
they were rather diffident, and did not succeed ; on the second, 
they improved, and on the third evening they were still better. . 
Circumstances prevented them being able to continue their 
visits to us, but I saw enough to make me feel perfectly sure 
that had they persevered they would have been quite equal to 
our own circle in the faculty of thought-reading. 

Those who may be desirous of ascertaining the truth of the 
matter can do so in their own families ; and since it in no way 
interferes with the health of those engaged, it will be found a 
very interesting way of passing an hour on a winter's evening. 

The distance between the thinkers and the thought-reader is 
of considerable consequence. As a rule the best results take 



34 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

place when this distance is not more than a yard or two ; but, 
under very favorable mental conditions, we have often had four 
and five cards named right in succession, while the thought- 
reader was placed in a room on the landing above that in which 
the thinkers were assembled. 

On questioning the children as to the mode by which they 
form their judgment of the ideas that come before their minds, 
I find them all agreed in this : two or three ideas of objects of 
the class with which we are experimenting come before their 
minds, and, after a few moments' reflection, they select that 
which stands out w T ith the greatest vividness. At present we 
are not in a position to theorize very far on this subject, still we 
cannot help asking ourselves this question : How are the mo- 
tions of the brains of the thinkers communicated to the brain of 
the thought-reader ? Is there any such thing as direct action 
between mind and mind ? or, are "brain-waves" set up in some 
intervening medium, either in the luminiferous ether, or in a 
nerve atmosphere developed at the time in the cerebra of the 
thinkers, by which the corresponding idea is called up in the 
mind of the thought-reader? These are questions which, at 
present, we cannot definitely answer ; but I am under the im- 
pression that the medium of communication is something more 
subtle than the vehicle that conveys heat and light. 

When w r e began to investigate these curious phenomena, we 
had no idea that the result of our little amusement would ever 
come before the public. But having been asked to deliver a 
lecture on some popular subject before a small philosophical 
society in Derby, I volunteered to give an account of the 
experiments in " thought-reading " with which I was then 
engaged. A short report, which appeared in the local papers, I 
forwarded to Professor Barrett, who, I knew, was interested in 
such matters. He at once took it up, and paid us his first visit 
at Easter, 1881, the results of which he afterwards published in 
" Nature ; " and should conclusions of any psychological value 
be ever deduced from the experiments that I commenced, it will 
be mainly to him that science will be indebted. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 35 

Concerning Mr. Creery's family and the experiments with the 
daughters, the committee say : — 

During the year which has elapsed since we first heard of this 
family, seven visits, mostly of several days' duration, have been 
paid to the town where they live, by ourselves and several 
scientific friends, and on these occasions daily experiments have 
been made. 

The inquiry has taken place partly in Mr. Creery's house, 
and partly in lodgings or in a private room of an hotel, occupied 
by some of our number. Having selected at random one child, 
whom we desired to leave the room and wait at some distance, 
we would choose a card from a pack, or write on paper a 
number or a name which occurred to us at the moment. Gen- 
erally, but not always, this was shown to the members of the 
family present in the room ; but no one member was always 
present, and we were sometimes entirely alone. We then 
recalled the child, one of us always assuring himself that, when 
the door was suddenly opened, she w r as at a considerable dis- 
tance (in their own house, at the further end of a passage), 
though this was usually a superfluity of caution, as our habit 
was to avoid all utterance of what was chosen. Before leaving 
the room, the child had been informed of the general nature of 
the test we intended to select, as " this will be a card," or "this 
will be a name." On re-entering she stood — sometimes turned 
by us with her face to the wall, oftener with her eyes directed 
towards the ground, and usually close to us and remote from 
her family — for a period of silence varying from a few seconds 
to a minute, till she called out to us some number, card, or 
whatever it might be. If this was incorrect, we usually allowed 
a second trial, and occasionally a third. 

To give an example : The following results were obtained on 
the evening of April 12, in the presence of two of our number 
and the family. The first attempt of one of the children was to 
state (without searching) the hiding-place of some small object, 
the place having been chosen by ourselves, with the full range 
of the house, and then communicated to the other members of 
the family. This was effected in one case only out of four. 



2,6 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

The next attempt was to give the name of some familiar object 
agreed on in the child's absence, as sponge, pepper-castor, etc. 
This was successful on a first trial in six cases out of fourteen. 
We then chose a card from a full pack in the child's absence, 
and called upon her to name it on her return. This was successful 
at once in six cases out of thirteen. We then tried holding 
small objects in the hand, — as a latch-key, a half sovereign, a 
green ball, — which were at once rightly named in five cases out 
of six. A harder trial was now introduced. The maid-servant 
having left the room, one of us wrote down the name " Michael 
Davitt," showed it round, and then put the paper in his pocket. 
The door was now opened, and the girl recalled from the end of 
the passage. She stood close to the door amid absolute silence, 
and with her eyes on the ground — all of us meanwhile fixing 
our attention on the appointed name — and gave, after a few 
seconds, the name " Michael," and then, almost immediately, 
" Davitt." To avoid any association of ideas, we then chose 
imaginary names, made up by ourselves at the moment, as 
"Samuel Morris," "John Thomas Parker," ".Phoebe Wilson." 
The names were given correctly in toto at the first trial in five 
cases out of ten. Three cases were complete failures, and in 
two the names given bore a strong resemblance to those selected 
by us, — "Jacob Williams " being given as "Jacob Wild," and 
" Emily Walker," as " 'Enry Walker." It was now getting late, 
and both we and the younger children were very tired; and four 
attempts to guess the name of a town in England were all fail- 
ures, though one of us had previously obtained remarkable suc- 
cess with this very experiment. 

The results obtained when the family were present gain enor- 
mously in value if similar results can be shown when none but 
strangers to the familv know the word or card selected, or when 
the child who is the subject of the experiment is completely 
isolated from those who know the thing chosen. We will there- 
fore describe two series of experiments of this character, which 
appear to us to be absolutely unexceptionable and conclusive, 
so far as they go. 

Easter, 1881. Present: Mr. and Mrs. Creery and family. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND, 37 

and W. F. Barrett, the narrator. One of the children was sent 
into an adjoining room, the door of which I saw was closed. 
On returning to the sitting-room, and closing its door also, I 
thought of some object in the house, fixed upon at random ; 
writing the name down, I showed it to the family present, the 
strictest silence being preserved throughout. We then all 
silently thought of the name of the thing selected. In a few 
seconds the door of the adjoining room was heard to open, and 
after a very short interval the child would enter the sitting- 
room, generally speaking with the object selected. Xo one was 
allowed to leave the sitting-room after the object had been fixed 
upon ; no communication with the child was conceivable, as her 
place was often changed. Further, the only instructions given 
to the child were to fetch some object in the house that I would 
fix upon, and, together with the family, silently keep in mind to 
the exclusion, as far as possible, of all other ideas. In this way 
I wrote down, among other things, a " hair-brush/' — it was 
brought; an " orange," — it was brought; a "wineglass," — it 
was brought ; " an apple," — it was brought ; a " toasting-fork," 
failed on the first attempt, a pair of tongs being brought, but on 
a second trial it was brought. With another child (among other 
trials not here mentioned), a "cup" was written down by me. — 
it was brought ; a " saucer," — this was a failure, a plate being 
brought ; no second trial allowed. The child, being told it was 
a saucer, replied, — ''That came into my head, but I hesitated, 
as I thought it unlikely you would name saucer after cup, as 
being too easy." 

This last trial, some would think, shows pure guesswork, and 
invalidates the other results ; but we prefer to let it stand, as, 
taken in conjunction with our experience obtained in other ways, 
it indicates one source of failure ; namely, that in delicate ex- 
periments of the kind here recorded (assuming them to be cases 
of thought-transmission), the slightest effort of reason, or of 
will, on the part of the subject is sufficient to vitiate the success 
of the experiment. Xo doubt the chief source of failure is to 
be found in the difficulty of suppressing the more vivid impres- 
sions made on the mind by the ordinary channels of sensation. 



38 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

We may compare this to the action of a die in stamping ; light 
pressure of the die will yield a delicate and faithful impression, 
or a blurred and imperfect one, or none at all, according to the 
nature of the material that is stamped, or the prior existence of 
any deeply cut impression. 

The second series of experiments, which, we venture to think, 
are unexceptionable, were made by Mr. Myers and Mr. Gurney, 
together with two ladies who were entire strangers to the family. 
None of the family knew what we had selected, the type of the 
thing being told only to the child chosen to guess. The experi- 
menters took every precaution in order that no indication, how- 
ever slight, should reach the child. She was recalled by one of 
the experimenters and stood near the door with downcast eyes. 
In this way the following results were obtained. The thing 
selected is printed in italics, and the only w T ords spoken during 
the experiment are put in parentheses : — 

Experiments made on April 13, 1882. 
Objects to be named. 

A white penknife. — Correctly named, with the color, the first 
trial. 

Box of abno?ids. — Correctly named, 

Threepenny piece. — Failed. 

Box of chocolate. — Button-box said ; no second trial given. 

Penknife hidden. — Failed to name the place. 

Numbers to be named. 

Five. — Correctly given the first trial. 

Fourteen. — Failed. 

Thirty-three. — 54 (No). 34 (No). 33 (Right). 

Sixty-eight. — 58 (No). 57 (No). 78 (No). 

Fictitious names to be guessed. 
Martha Billings. — Failed ; Biggis was said. 
Catherine Smith. — Catherine Shaw said. 
He?try Cowper. — Failed. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 39 

Cards to be named. 

Two of clubs. — Right first time. 

Queeti of diamonds. — Right first time. 

Four of Spades. — Failed. 

Four of 'hearts. — Right first time. 

King of hearts. — Right first time. 

Two of diamonds. — Right first time. 

Ace of hearts. — Right first time. 

Nine of spades. — Right first time. 

Five of dia?nonds. — Four of diamonds (No). Four of hearts 
(Xo). Five of diamonds (Right). 

Two of spades. — Right first time. 

Eight of diamonds. — Ace of diamonds said ; no second trial 
given. 

Three of hearts. — Right first time, 

Five of clubs. — Failed. 

Ace of spades. — Failed. 

The chances against success in the case of any one card are, 
of course, fifty-one to one, assuming that there is no such thing 
as thought-reading, and that errors of experiment are avoided. 
Special precautions were taken to avoid such errors of experi- 
ment as are described by Dr. Beard, and the results show that 
in the case of cards, out of fourteen successive trials nine were 
guessed rightly the first time, and only three trials can be said 
to have been complete failures. On none of these occasions 
was it even remotely possible for the child to obtain by any 
ordinary means a knowledge of the card selected. Our own 
facial expression was the only index open to her ; and even if 
we had not purposely looked as neutral as possible, it is difficult 
to imagine how we could have unconsciously carried, say, the 
two of diamonds written on our foreheads. 

Xow, if we apply to these two sets of experiments the sources 
of error enumerated by Dr. Beard, the conclusion, we venture 
to think, is inevitable that we have here very strong evidence 
in favor of a class of phenomena entirely new to science. In- 
voluntary actions, such as movement of the lips, etc., could not 



40 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

reach the child when she was out of sight and hearing, as was 
the case in the first series of experiments. Conscious or uncon- 
scious deception on the part of the subject does not apply, as the 
thing wished for was selected and written down by one of us. 
Collusion by a third party is avoided by the fact that none were 
allowed to enter or leave the room after we had selected the 
thing to be guessed, and in the second series of experiments by 
the exclusion of all members of the family, either from the room, 
or from participation in the requisite knowledge ; * whilst chance 
and coincidence we have already dealt with. In many trials, such 
as the guessing of fictitious names, made up by us on the spur 
of the moment, the chances against success were, of course, 
incalculable ; yet, as will be seen by the following record taken 
from our last day's experimenting, these names were guessed 
with as much ease as cards, where the chances against success 
were far less. 

In the following experiments the thing selected was known to 
the family, who, however, never left their places after we had 
written down the word and silently handed it round, or drawn a 
card, exposed it, and then replaced it in absolute silence. The 
child was now recalled by one of tis, and, as before, stood in com- 
plete silence near the door, no sounds nor movements nor interrog- 
atory remarks of any kind by anyone being permitted. There were 
present Mr. Gurney and Mr. Myers (Professor Barrett having 
left the day before) and the family. 

Morning of April 17, 1882 : 

Cards to be named, drawn at random from a full pack. The 
card selected is printed in italics, the guesses are given in Ro- 
man type, and the only remarks made, and those were by us, are 
put in parentheses. 

Five of clubs. — King of hearts (No). Five of clubs (Right). 

Two of spades. — Two of spades (Right). 

Five of spades. — Four of diamonds (No). 

1 In subsequent experiments we obtained successful results by individual 
trials with each of the children, that is to say, the number, word, or card was 
known to some one of us only. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 4 1 

Three of spades. — Three of hearts (No). Ace of spades 
(No). 

Five of clubs. — Four of clubs (No). Ace of clubs (No). 

Two of spades. — Two of clubs (No). Three of clubs (No). 

Eight of spades. — Eight of clubs (No). Eight of spades 
(Right). 

Knave of 'hearts. — Knave of hearts (Right). 

Six of hearts. — Six of clubs (No). Seven of clubs (No). 

Eight of hearts. — Seven of hearts (No). Seven of clubs (No). 

Ace of clubs. — Queen of clubs (No). Ace of clubs (Right). 

Two of clubs. — Two of clubs (Right). 

Seven of hearts. — Two of diamonds (No). Three of hearts (No). 

Two of spades. — Two of clubs (No). Two of spades (Right). 

Six of diamonds. — Six of clubs (No). Six of diamonds 
(Right). 

Three of hearts. — Four of hearts (No). Three of hearts 
(Right). 

Eight of diamonds. — Five of diamonds (No). Seven of dia- 
monds (No). 

Eight of spades. — Nine of spades (No). Ten of spades (No). 
Eight of spades (Right). 

King of spades. — King of clubs (No). Knave of clubs (No). 
King of diamonds (No). 

Three of spades. — Three of spades (Right). 

Knave of diamonds. — King of diamonds (No). Knave of dia- 
monds (Right). 

Nine of spades. — Nine of spades (Right). 

Ten of clubs. — Ten of hearts (No). Queen of hearts (No). 

Three of diamonds. — Three of diamonds (Right). 

Six of spades. — Six of spades (Right). 

Te?i of diamonds. — Ten of diamonds (Right). 

Knave of diamonds. — Ace of diamonds (No). 

The trials so far were principally with the two children, Maud 
and Alice ; the eldest sister, Mary, was now tried, with the fol- 
lowing results, every experiment being given in the order it was 
made : — 



42 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Six of spades. — Eight of clubs (No). Eight of spades (No). 

Ace of diamonds. — Ace of diamonds (Right). 

Queen of hearts. — Queen of hearts (Right). 

Two of clubs. — Two of clubs (Right). 

Ten of spades. — Ten of spades (Right). 

Ten of diamonds. — Ten of diamonds (Right). 

Five of spades. — Five of spades (Right). 

Two of spades. — Two of spades (Right). 

Five of diamonds. — Five of diamonds (Right). 

Three of clubs. — Four of clubs (No). Five of clubs (No). 
Three of clubs (Right). 

King of clubs. — Ace of diamonds (No). Knave of clubs (No). 
King of clubs (Right). 

Five of spades. — Four of spades (No). Five of spades (Right). 

Seven of diamonds. — Five of diamonds (No). Five of clubs 
(No). Seven of diamonds (Right). 

Queen of spades. — Queen of spades (Right). 

Six of spades. — Six of spades (Right). 

Three of spades. — Four of spades (No). Three of spades 
(Right). 

Knave of diamonds. — Ace of diamonds (No). Knave of dia- 
monds (Right). 

Eight of hearts. — Nine of hearts (No). Eight of hearts 
(Right). 

Nine of diamonds. — Nine of diamonds (Right). 

Knave of clubs. — King of clubs (No). Knave of clubs 
(Right). 

Four of clubs. — Four of clubs (Right). 

Nine of hearts. — Five of hearts (No). Nine of hearts 
(Right). 

Two of clubs. — Two of clubs (Right). 

Six of clubs. — Six of clubs (Right). 

King of clubs. — Knave of clubs (No). King of clubs 
(Right). 

Nine of hearts. — Nine of diamonds (No). Nine of hearts 
(Right). 

Ten of clubs. — Ten of clubs (Right). 



HIND-READING AND BEYOND. 43 

Ace of clubs. — Ace of clubs (Right). 

Fii'e of clubs. — Five of clubs (Right). 

Seven of clubs. — Five of diamonds (No). Seven of clubs 
(Right). 

Knave of hearts. — Knave of clubs (No). Knave of diamonds 
(No). Knave of hearts (Right). 

Fictitious words were now chosen. During some of these 
trials Mr. Creery was absent. Miss Mary was the guesser in 
the first five trials, then Maud was selected ; the words chosen 
are again indicated by italics : — 
William Stubbs. — William Stubbs. 

Eliza Holmes. — Eliza H . 

Isaac Harding. — Isaac Harding. 

Sophia Shaw. — Sophia Shaw. 

Hester Willis. — Cassandra, then Hester Wilson. 

John Jones. — John Jones. 

Timothy Taylor. — Tom. then Timothy Taylor, 

Esther Ogle. — Esther Ogle. 

Arthur Higgins. — Arthur Higgins. 

Alfred Henderson. — Alfred Henderson. 

Amy Frog?nore. — Amy Freemore. Amy Frogmore. 

Albert Snelgrove. — Albert Singrore. Albert Grover. 

In estimating our successes and failures, partial success is 
counted as a failure ; thus, seven of diamonds given instead of 
eight of diamonds, is counted wrong, and so in the names, — 
Wilson given instead of Willis, and Grover instead of Snelgrove, 
are counted as failures. 

The outline of results during the present investigation, which 
extended over six days, stands as follows: — Altogether 382 
trials were made. In the case of letters of the alphabet, of 
cards, and of numbers of two figures, the chances against suc- 
cess on a first trial would naturally be 25 to 1. 51 to 1, and 89 
to 1, respectively: in the case of surnames they would of 
course be indefinitely greater. Cards were most frequently em- 
ployed, and the odds in their case may be taken as a fair 



44 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

medium sample ; according to which, out of the whole series of 
382 trials, the average number of successes at the first attempt 
by an ordinary guesser would be 7^. Of our trials, 127 were 
successes on the first attempt, 56 on the second, 19 on the third, 
making 202 in all. On most of the occasions of failure, — 180 
in number — second trials were made; but in some cases the 
guesser professed inability, and declined to make more than 
one, and in others we allowed three ; no trial beyond the third 
was ever allowed. During the last day or two of trial, after it 
had occurred to us to notice the point, we found that of the fail- 
ures to guess a card at the first trial, those wrong both in suit 
and number were a small minority. 

Our most striking piece of success, when the thing selected 
was divulged to none of the family, was five cards running 
named correctly on a first trial ; the odds against this happen- 
ing once in our series were considerably over a million to one. 
We had altogether a good many similar batches, the two longest 
runs being eight consecutive successes, — once with cards and 
once with names ; where the adverse odds in the former case 
were over one hundred and forty-two millions to one, and in 
the latter something incalculably greater. If we add to these 
results others obtained on previous visits, it seems not too much 
to say that the hypothesis of mere coincide?ice is practically 
excluded. 

We are aware that the exceptional nature of this inquiry goes 
far to invalidate arguments founded on character and demeanor; 
and on this head, therefore, will only state our conviction that 
any candid critic, present during the whole course of the experi- 
ments, would have carried away a far more vivid impression of 
their genuineness than the bare printed record can possibly 
convey. Of more real importance is the hypothesis of exalted 
sensibility of the ordinary sense organs. We could discover no 
indication of this in any of its known forms ; but by way of pre- 
caution, as has been already stated, we commonly avoided even 
whispering any word, number, or name that we had selected; 
and the position of the excluded child, when the door was 
opened, would, in every case, have satisfied the most exacting 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 45 

critic. The explanation which might be sought in unconscious 
indications given by the sitters, and especially in the movement 
of the lips, has been already adverted to. 

Coming, as we did, to this investigation with considerable pre- 
vious experience of the same kind, we were throughout strictly 
on our guard against giving such indications ourselves ; the 
possibility of their being given by the family was, of course, ex- 
cluded where the family were ignorant of the selected word or 
thing ; and on the remaining occasions our perpetual vigilant 
watch never detected a trace of anything of the kind. The 
absolute docility of the children — both the guesser and the 
others — in taking any position in the room that we indicated, 
was naturally an assistance to our precautions. It may be 
further mentioned that, on a previous visit made by one of us, 
the child called the required name through the shut door or 
from an adjoining room, having thus been completely isolated 
from the very beginning to the very end of the experiment. 

It must be remembered that our great preoccupation through- 
out was to guard against delusion. Had the phenomena been 
sufficiently established to allow of a systematic search for their 
underlying laws, we might have preferred a more unvarying 
method of experimentation ; but in this preliminary stage it 
seemed desirable to meet primd facie possibilities of deception 
by frequent and unexpected changes of the various conditions. 
At the same time we endeavored to gather such indications as 
we could of the way in which the impression flashed on the mind 
of the child. 

The first question concerns the respective parts in the phe- 
nomena played by mental eye and mental ear. Among the ex- 
periments which we have counted as failures were very many 
where the number or card selected was guessed, as it were, piece- 
meal. For instance, the number 35 was selected, and the guesses 
were 45 and 43. So 57 was attempted as 47 and 45. So with 
cards : the seven of diamonds being chosen, the guesses were 
six of diamonds and seven of hearts ; the three of spades being 
chosen, the guesses were queen of spades and three of diamonds. 
These cases seem somewhat in favor of mental eye, the simi- 



46 MIND-READING AND BEYOND.* 

larityin sound between three and thirty in 43 and 35, or between 
five and fifty in 45 and 57, not being extremely strong; while 
the picture of the 3 or the 5 is identical in either pair. A strong- 
er argument on the same side is the frequent guessing of king 
for knave, and vice versa. On the other hand, names of approxi- 
mate sound (also reckoned as failures) were often given instead 
of the true ones ; as " Chester " for Leicester, " Biggis " for Bil- 
lings. Frogmore was guessed first as " Freemore " ; Snelgrove 
was given as " Singrore," the last part of the name was soon 
given as " Grover," and the attempt w r as then abandoned ; the 
child remarking afterwards that she thought of " Snail " as the 
first syllable, but it had seemed to her too ridiculous. One of 
us has, moreover, successfully obtained from the maid-servant a 
German word, of which she could have formed no visual image. 
The children's own account is usually to the effect that they 
" seem to see" the thing; but this, perhaps, does not come to 
much, as a known object, however suggested, is sure to be in- 
stantly visualized. 

Another question would be as to the effect of greater or less dis- 
tance between the sitters and the guesser, and of the intervention 
of obstacles. It will have been seen that, in the experiments 
conducted by one of us on a former occasion, the intervention of 
a door or wall seemed to make no difference. It would be 
interesting, again, to discover whether numerical increase in the 
observers increases the effect, and how far the presence of spe- 
cial persons is influential. In our experience the presence of 
the father — though by no means essential, and very often dis- 
pensed w T ith — seemed decidedly to increase the percentage of 
successes. 

A still more interesting and important question concerns such 
conditions of success and failure as may lie in the circumstances, 
disposition, general capacity, and mood of the subject, including 
such points as consanguinity and familiarity with members of the 
circle, and also in the temper and manner of the latter. We are 
dealing, not with chemical substances, but with childish minds, 
liable to be reduced to shyness and confusion by anything in the 
aspect or demeanor of visitors which inspires distaste or alarm. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 47 

The importance of " a childly way with children," and the slight- 
ness of the differences of manner which will either paralyze 
them into stupidity or evoke unexpected intelligence and power, 
are commonplaces to anyone whose duties have lain among them ; 
and attention to such points may be as prime a factor of success 
in these delicate experiments as any other. 

The delicacy of the conditions was illustrated in our ow r n in- 
quiry partly by the inexplicable fluctuations of success and fail- 
ure affecting the whole household, partly by the wide difference 
observed in the capacities of particular members of it from day to 
day. The common notion that simplicity, and even comparative 
blankness of mind, are important conditions, seems somewhat 
doubtfully borne out by our experience ; but of the favorable 
effect of freedom from constraint, and of a spice of pleasurable 
excitement, we can speak with entire assurance. The particu- 
lar ill-success of a sitting which we held one close afternoon 
was attributed by the children themselves — and it seemed to us 
correctly — to inertness after their early dinner. 

We could find no resemblances between these phenomena 
and those known as mesmeric ; inasmuch as a perfectly normal 
state on the part of the subject seemed our first prerequisite. 
Nor did we find any evidence that "strength of will" has any 
particular effect, except so far as both subject and circle may 
exercise it in patient attention. On one or tw T o occasions it 
seemed of advantage to obtain vivid simultaneous realization of 
the desired word on the part of all the sitters ; w 7 hich is most 
easily effected if some one slowly and gently claps time, and all 
mentally summon up the word with the beats, 

Many further lines of the investigation suggest themselves ; for 
instance, a great step would be made if a more complex idea, and 
one not habitually expressed by one definite sound or set of 
sounds, could be transmitted. An immense number of accu- 
rately recorded experiments will be necessary for the establish- 
ment of such special points ; and possibly the present instalment 
may serve in some degree to stimulate and concentrate various 
inquiries in the same direction, which, though widely spread, 
seem so far to have been for the most part of a lax and fitful 



48 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

sort. The material for such inquiries, as may be surmised from 
the present record, must be in large proportion children, who 
are fortunately not rare, and who may be congratulated on so 
grand an opportunity for combining utility with amusement. 
The primary aim Li all cases must be to get the results without 

physical contact or anything approaching it, a stage to which some 
practice with contact may be a necessary preliminary ; in no 
other way can the hypothesis of " muscle-reading " be with cer- 
tainty eliminated ; w T hile en revanche, the phenomena without 
contact, if once established, will afford solid ground for ques- 
tioning the sufficiency of that hypothesis to account for all cases 
in which contact occurs. 

Professor Balfour Stewart, LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Phys- 
ics at the Owens College, Manchester, made independent experi- 
ments with this family. He says : We paid two visits to the 
house. In the first instance, the thought-reader was outside a 
door. The object or thing thought of was written on paper and 
silently handed round to the company in the room. The thought- 
reader was then called in, and in the course, perhaps, of a 
minute the answer was given. Definite objects in the room, for 
instance, were first thought of, and generally the answer was 
right. Then cards were tnought of, and in the majority of cases 

• the answer was correct. Then numbers were thought of, and 
the answers were generally right ; but, of course, there were 
some cases of error. Then names of towns were thought of, and 
a good many of these were right. Then fancy names were 
thought of. When my colleague, Professor Hopkinson, had 
gone away, I was asked to think of certain fancy names, and 
mark them down and hand them round to the company. I then 
thought of, and wrote on paper, " Blue-beard," "Tom Thumb," 
" Cinderella," and the answers were all correct. I think it was 
the servant who answered " Cinderella." There was some hesi- 
tation in getting her to pronounce the name, as she seemed to 
think she did not know it. 

After the first visit, one of my colleagues at Owens College 
remarked that it would be more conclusive if the thought-reader, 
instead of turning her face to the company, turned her face to 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 49 

the wall ; and that was accordingly done on the second occa- 
sion. The percentage of success was about as large as in the 
first instance. In one case, while the thought-reader remained 
behind the door, a card was chosen. I chose the " ace of 
hearts," and the paper on which it was written down was handed 
round to the company. The thought-reader in a few moments 
called out, " Ace of hearts ! " 

The following is the detailed report of the experiments I have 
alluded to : — 

On Saturday, Nov. 12, 188 1, Professor Alfred Hopkinson and 
I went to the house of the Rev. A. M. Creery, at Buxton. 
There were present, besides Mr. Creery, Miss Mary Creery, 
also Alice, Emily, Maud, Kathleen, children ; and the servant 
Jane. 

After a few preliminary trials, the following guesses were 
made, the guesser going out of the room until some object was 
thought of by the company, when she came in and tried to guess 
what object was in the thoughts of all. No questions were 
asked nor observations made by the company : — 

First — Definite Objects Thought Of. 

1. Pipe. — Alice guessed paper, plate, then pipe. 

2. Fork. — Maud guessed it at once. 

3. Cup. — Emily guessed it at once. 

4. Corkscrew. — Jane guessed it at once. 

5. Tongs. — Miss Mary guessed fire-irons and then poker. 

Second. — Cards Thought Of. 

6. Three of clubs. — Jane guessed three of spades, then three 

of clubs. 

7. Queen of clubs.— -Miss Mary guessed three of diamonds. 

8. Four of clubs. — Maud guessed five of clubs, then four of 

clubs. 

9. Ace of diamonds. — Jane guessed ace of clubs, then ace of 

diamonds. 



50 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

io. King of spades. — Jane guessed four of diamonds, then six 

of diamonds. 
ii. King of hearts. — Maud guessed knave of hearts, then king 

of hearts. 

12. Ace of spades. — Maud guessed right at once. 

13. King of diamonds. — Professor Stewart tried and guessed 

ten of diamonds. 

14. Three of diai7ionds. — Miss Mary guessed right at once. 

15. Ace of hearts. — Alice guessed right at once. 

16. King of clubs. — Professor Hopkinson tried and guessed 

knave of spades, then four of hearts. 

17. Mr. Creery and Professor Balfour Stewart tried, but could 

not guess. 

Third. — Numbers Thought Of. 

18. Forty-eight . — Jane guessed 34, 44, 84. 

19. Sixty-seven. — Miss Mary guessed 66, then 67. 

20. Fifty five. — Maud guessed 54, 56, then 55. 

21. Eighty-one. — Alice guessed 71, then 81. 

22. Thirty-one. — Emily did not guess it. 

23. Eleven. — Kathleen did not guess it. 

Fourth. — Objects Thought Of. 

Experiments 24, 25, 26, and 27, in which objects w r ere thought 
of, were inconclusive, as the names of the things chosen might 
possibly have been surmised by the guesser. 

Fifth. — -Names of Towns Thought Of. 

28. Macclesfield. — Jane did not guess rightly, then sat down, 

and shortly afterwards guessed rightly. 

29. York. — Maud guessed Ashford, then York. 

30. Paris. — Miss Mary did not guess rightly. 

31. Chester. — Jane guessed Manchester, then Chester. 

(N. B. — During this series also Mr. Creery was out of the 
room.) 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



51 



Sixth. — Fancy Names. 

32. Peter Piper. — Alice guessed at once. 

$$. Bluebeard. — Jane guessed at once. 

34. Tom Thumb. — Jane guessed at once. 

35. Cinderella. — Jane guessed at once. 

I ought to state that the object thought of was marked on 
paper by one of the company, and handed round silently, so 
that all present might be aware of it. 

I ought also to mention that the thought-reader was aware of 
the general character of the things thought of ; for instance, that 
it was definite objects in the first place ; cards in the second, 
and so on. 

Professor Hopkinson agrees with the above memorandum, 
except that after No. 29, Derby was put down as the name of a 
town, and Maud guessed right the first time. 

Experiments at Buxton, Feb. 18, 1882. — Present: Mr. 
Creery and his five daughters; servant Jane; also Professors 
Hopkinson and Balfour Stewart. 



GUESSER. 

i. Jane . . . 


Card Selected by 
Balfour Stewart. 

. Six of hearts . . . 


Result. 

Wrong. 


2. Miss Alice . 


. Knave of clubs . . . 


a 


3. Miss Maud . 


. Seven of hearts . . . 


Right 1st time 


4. 

5. 


. Ten of spades . . . 
. King of diamonds . . 


" 1 st time 
" 2d time 


6. Miss Maud . 


. Ace of hearts . . 


. Wrong. 


7. Miss Mary . 

8. Jane . . 


. Six of spades . . . 
. Ten of hearts . . 


Right 1st time 


9. « . . 


. Three of diamonds . 


Wrong. 


10. " . . . 


. Four of diamonds . . 


a 


11. " . . 

12. Miss Maud 


, . Four of spades . . 
. . Five of clubs . . . 


. Right 3d time. 


13. 


. . Six of hearts . . . 


" 2d time. 


14. 

15. Miss Alice 


. . Queen of hearts 
. . Two of diamonds . 


" 1st time 
" 2d time. 



52 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 







Card Selected by 






GUESSER. 


Balfour Stewart. 


Result. 


16. 


Miss Alice , 


. Nine of diamonds . . 


Right 3d time. 


I 7- 


a 


. . Three of clubs . . . 


" 3d time. 


18. 


a 


, . Six of diamonds 


" 3d time. 


IQ. 


a 


, . King of spades . . 


u 2d time. 


20. 


u 


. . Queen of spades . 


" 3d time. 


21. 


u 


, . Knave of diamonds 


" 2d time. 


22. 


Miss Mary 


. Eight of clubs . . 


Wrong. 


2V 


Jane . . 


, . Five of diamonds . 


. Right 1 st time. 


24, 


a 


. . Four of spades . . 


" 1st time. 




(In the three next experiments the guesser remained outside the door.) 


25- 


a 


. . Ace of hearts . . 


. Right 1st time. 
f Wrong. Ace of 
(. spades guessed. 


26. 


a 


. . Five of spades . . 


27. 


a 


. . Five of diamonds . 


( Wrong. Ace of 
' ( diam'dsguessed. 










Number Selected by 








Balfour Stewart. 





28. Jane 

29. " 

30. " 
3i. 

3 2 - 
33- 
34- 
35- 
36. 
37- 
38. 

39- 
40. 
41. 



Miss Maud 



Miss Alice 



Miss Mary 



Jane 



22 Right 1 st time. 

46 Wrong. 

10 Right 1st time. 

12 Wrong. 

44 Right 1st time. 

37 " 1st time. 

81 Wrong. 

^^ Right 1st time. 

27 " 2d time. 

55 Wrong. 

66 

28 

43 

22 



Object Selected by 
Balfour Stewart. 



42. Jane .... A dish Wrong. 

43. Miss Maud . . Cream jug .... " 

44. Miss Alice . . Scissors . / . . . Right 1st time. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



53 



45- 
46. 

47- 



GUESSER. 

Miss Alice 

a 

Miss Maud 

u 

Jane . . 

a 

Miss Alice 



49 
5° 
5 1 

52. 

53. Miss Mary 

54. 
55- 
56. 
57. Miss Maud 



Object Selected by 
Balfour Stewart. 

Prof. Hopkinson's hat, 

Key 

Clothes brush . . . 

Umbrella 

Candlestick .... 

Teapot 

Watch 

Key. 

Knife ...... 

Pencil 

Toothpick 

A sovereign .... 
Purse 



Result. 

Right 3d time. 

Wrong. 

Right 1 st time. 

Wrong. 



Right 1 st time. 1 
" 1st time. 
Doubtful. 
Right 2d time. 
Wrong. 



In all the above cases, except two or three, the guesser's back 
was turned to the company. 

Mr. Turner, a medical man residing in Buxton, at the request 
of Mr. Creery, conducted some experiments, which he thus 
records : — 

With a friend, who appends his signature to these notes, 
which are copied from those taken on the moment, I visited the 
Rev. A. M. Creery on Feb. 18, 1882, for the purpose of witness- 
ing the power of thought-reading possessed by his children. In 
the absence of Mr. Creery, I made an attempt to test the chil- 
dren's power, and with the following results, roughly chronicled, 
I know, and imperfect as a searching test, but accurate as to. the 
results obtained. 

Miss Alice Creery. 

Expt. 1. — What do I hold in my hand? 
tacles. (Describe them.) Eyeglasses. (I 
eyeglasses concealed in my hand.) 

Expt. 2. — What do I hold in my hand? Answer. — Piece 
of paper. (No.) Knife. (Describe it.) It is white. (De- 

1 The knife was also correctly described by the guesser. It had not been 
out of Professor Hopkinson's pocket until after Miss Mary had left the 



Answer. — Spec- 
had Mr. Orme's 



54 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

scribe further.) It has a toothpick and button-hook. (Correct ; 
it had other implements useful to a smoker.) 

Expt. 3. — What do I hold in my hand ? Answer, — A ring. 
(Describe it.) Has a buckle on it. (Correct.) 

Miss Maud Creery. 

Expt. 1. — What town have we thought of ? Answer. — Bux- 
ton. (Correct.) 

Expt. 2. — What town have we thought of ? A?iswer. — Derby. 
(What part did you first think of ?) Railway station.. (So did 
I. Next.) The market-place. (So did I.) 

Expt. 3. — What town have we thought of ? Answer. — Some- 
thing commencing with L. (Pause of a minute.) Lincoln. 
(Correct.) 

Expt. 4. — What town have w r e thought of ? Answer. — 
Stockport. (Correct.) 

Expt. 5. — What town have we thought of ? Answer. — Fair- 
field. (What part did you think of first ?) The road to it. (So 
did I.) (What part next ?) The triangular green behind the 
Bull's Head Inn. (So did I.) 

Jane Dean, the Maid Servant. 

Expt. 1. — What do I take hold of in my pocket ? Answer. — 
Spectacle-case. (Does it contain anything ?) It 's empty. 
(Correct.) 

Expt. 2. — What have I placed under the piano ? Answer. — 
A key. (What is it the key of ? ) A club. (One and one-half 
minute's pause.) No. The key of the Asylum. (It was the 
key of the Asylum grounds. No one knew that I had a private 
key ; I am not officially connected with the Asylum.) 

Expt. 3. — What have we agreed to think of? Answer. — A 
flower. (What is the name of the flower ? Slight hesitation, 
then answered.) Lily of the valley. (No.) Immediately pointed 
to some flowers in Mr. Orme's coat. Snowdrop. (Correct.) 

Expt. 4. — What have I in my hand ? Answer. — A pin. 
(What color.) Black. (What shape ?) Bending her index 
finger and thumb into the shape of the letter C, she said, " That 
shape." Unknown to anyone I had bent it to that shape.) 

Expt. 5. — What card have I selected ? A?iswer. — Seven of 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 55 

hearts. (No.) Eight of hearts. (Correct. Which way is the 
point of the heart directed ?) Upwards. (Correct.) 

Expt. 6. — What card have I selected ? Answer. — Nine of 
spades. (Correct. Which way is the point of the spade 
directed ? ) Downwards. (Correct.) 

No one knew of the previous card except Mr. Orme. No one, 
knew of the second card except myself. 

Fredk. Turner, M.R.C.S., Grafton House, Buxton. 
John H. Orme, Solicitor, Buxton. 

July 14, 1882. 

The fourth head comprises cases where similar thoughts have 
simultaneously occurred, or impressions been made in minds far 
apart, without any known means of communication : — 

Several cases of this kind have reached us, but they rest upon 
the testimony of others, and though we have no reason to doubt 
the accuracy of our informants, the evidence has necessarily a 
lower rank than the preceding. The following cases may be 
taken as a sample of other statements that have come to our 
knowledge. We are acquainted with, but not at liberty to pub- 
lish, the names in the first case, which is related by the wife of 
General R . 

11 On Sept. 9, 1848, at the siege of Mooltan, Major-General 

R , C.B., then adjutant of his regiment, was most severely 

and dangerously wounded, and, supposing himself dying, asked 
one of the officers with him to take the ring off his finger and 
send it to his wife, who at the time was fully 150 miles distant, 
at Ferozepore. 

"On the night of Sept. 9, 1848, I was lying on my bed, be- 
tween sleeping and waking, when I distinctly saw my husband 
being carried off the field, seriously wounded, and heard his 
voice, saying, ' Take this ring off my finger, and send it to my 
wife.' All the next day I could not get the sight or the voice 

out of my mind. In due time I heard of General R having 

been severely wounded in the assault on Mooltan. He sur- 
vived, however, and is still living. It was not for some time 
after the siege that I heard from Colonel L , the officer who 



56 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

helped to carry General R off the field, that the request as 

to the ring was actually made to him, just as I had heard it at 
Ferozepore at that very time. — M. A. R." 

"Leslie Lodge, Ealing, W., Oct. 10, 1876. 
" Dear Sir, — The circumstance about which you inquire is 
as follows ; I had left my house, ten miles from London, in the 
-morning as usual, and in the course of the day was on my way 
to Victoria Street, Westminster, having reached Buckingham 
Palace, when in attempting to cross the road, recently made 
muddy and slippery by the water-cart, I fell, and was nearly 
run over by a carriage coming in an opposite direction. The 
fall and the fright shook me considerably, but beyond that I 
was uninjured. On reaching home I found my wife waiting 
anxiously, and this is what she related to me : She was occupied 
wiping a cup in the kitchen, which she suddenly dropped, ex- 
claiming, ' My God ! he 's hurt.' Mrs. S., who was near her, 
heard the cry, and both agreed as to the details of time and so 
forth. I have often asked my wife why she cried out, but she is 
unable to explain the state of her feelings beyond saying, 'I 
don't know why; I felt some great danger was near you.' 
These are simple facts, but other things more puzzling have 
happened in connection with the singular intuitions of my wife. 

" Yours truly, 

"T. W. Smith." 

The next case is more remarkable ; our informant is a medi- 
cal man, Mr. C. Ede, of Guildford, to whom the incident was 
related both by Lady G. and her sister. 

" Lady G. and her sister had been spending the evening with 
their mother, who was in her usual health and spirits when they 
left her. In the middle of the night the sister awoke in a fright, 
and said to her husband, ' I must go to my mother at once ; do 
order the carriage. I am sure she is taken ill.' The husband, 
after trying in vain to convince his wife that it was only a fancy, 
ordered the carriage. As she was approaching her mother's 
house, where two roads meet, she saw Lady G.'s carriage. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 57 

When they met, each asked the other why she was there. The 
same reply was made by both. ' I could not sleep, feeling sure 
my mother was ill, and so I came to see.' As they came in 
sight of the house, they saw their mother's confidential maid at 
the door, who told them, when they arrived, that their mother 
had been taken suddenly ill, and was dying, and had expressed 
an earnest wish to see her daughters." 

The following interesting letter from Mr. Ede accompanied 
this narrative : — 

"Wonersh Lodge, Guildford, Surrey, Aug. 29, 1877. 

"Dear Sir, — The foregoing incident was told me as a simple 
narrative of what happened, both by Lady G. and her sister. 
The mother was a lady of strong will, and always had great 
influence over her daughters. 

" I myself have been persuaded that impressions and thoughts 
might be transmitted by the action of a powerful will upon sen- 
sitive brains at a distance, by some experiments which I made 
in mesmerism, being at first a strong disbeliever in all these 
things, and only convinced when testing the assertions of others. 
There must, it would seem, be some previous relation between 
the two brains, as in states of anxiety for the absent, or pow- 
erful longing. May not a material vibration in a strong brain 
affect another by its vibration, as light at a distance acts upon 
the retina of the eye, or sound upon the ear? We know that 
many sounds escape us if our attention be not directed to them, 
and, likewise, many objects may not be perceived. It is curious, 
in the case of Lady G. and her sister, that both impressions 
were made in the night, when the attention was not diverted by 
surrounding sights or sounds. 

"This may have had some connection with the following inci- 
dent which happened to myself lately. There is a house about 
half a mile from my own, inhabited by some ladies, friends of 
our family. They have a large alarm bell outside their house. 
One night I awoke suddenly and said to my wife, ' I am sure I 
hear Mrs. F.'s alarm bell ringing.' After listening for some 
time we heard nothing, and I went to sleep again. The next 



58 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

day Mrs. F. called upon my wife, and said to her, ' We were 
wishing for your husband last night, for we were alarmed by 
thieves. We were all up, and I was about to pull the alarm 
bell, hoping he would hear it, saying to my daughters, I am sure 
it will soon bring your husband, but we did not ring it/ My 
w 7 ife asked what time it was ; Mrs. F. said it was about half 
past one. That was the time I awoke thinking I heard the bell. 
" I could also give you many instances of the communication 
to another of a strong wish on my part, although unuttered, and 
unaccompanied by any gesture, or hint by look or action. I 
have often been amused at a concert, or other place of meeting, 
to single out some person who has their back to me, and will 
them to turn their head in a given direction towards me, and 
generally I succeed. It is common enough to have the same 
thoughts spoken by two people simultaneously, but, though the 
previous conversation might often suggest like ideas, I think 
it would not be difficult to sift out the cases of direct mental 
impressions from those of coincidence, suggestion, or sequence 
of thought arising from surrounding causes. When I have been 
strongly wishing to see a friend, it constantly happens that he 
appears. May not the many extraordinary cases of apparitions 
be but the mental pictures produced by other minds on a sensi- 
tive subject ? There is a well-known case recorded in the Colo- 
nial papers which supports this view. 

" Yours truly, 

" Charles Ede." 

Professor Barrett, in a separate paper submitted to this 
Society, says : — 

Interesting and able articles on thought-reading have recently 
appeared in the " Spectator," together with several letters on 
the subject. The term will-impression, rather than thought- 
reading, is proposed by one correspondent in the " Spectator," 
and with much justice ; the committee have accepted the ordi- 
nary phraseology simply because it has come into general use. 
Among the letters in the " Spectator " the following may be 
cited : — 



. MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 59 

u I had one day been spending the morning in shopping, and 
returned by train just in time to sit down with my children to 
our early family dinner. My youngest child — a sensitive, 
quick-witted, little maiden of two years and six weeks old — 
was one of the circle. Dinner had just commenced, when I 
suddenly recollected an incident in my morning's experience 
which I had intended to tell her, and I looked at the child with 
the full intention of saying, ' Mother saw a big, black dog in a 
shop, with curly hair,' catching her eyes in mine, as I paused an 
instant before speaking. Just then something called off my 
attention, and the sentence was not uttered. What was my amaze- 
ment, about two minutes afterwards, to hear my little lady 
announce, 'Mother saw a big dog in a shop.' I gasped. ' Yes, 
I did ! ' I answered ; ' but how did you know ? ' * With funny 
hair?' she added, quite calmly, and ignoring my question. 
1 What color was it, Evelyn ? ' said one of her elder brothers ; 
' was it black ? ' She said, ' Yes.' 

" Now, it was simply impossible that she could have received 
any hint of the incident verbally, I had had no friend with me 
when I had seen the clog. All the children had been at home, 
in our house in the country, four miles from the town; I had 
returned, as I said, just in time for the children's dinner, and I 
had not even remembered the circumstance until the moment 
when I fixed my eyes upon my little daughter's. We have had 
in our family circle numerous examples of spiritual or mental 
insight or foresight ; but this, I think, is decidedly the most 
remarkable that has ever come under my notice. 

" I am, Sir, etc., 

' ; Caroline Barber. 

u Ferndene, Abbeydale. near Sheffield, June 22.'' 

To the same journal the Suffragan Bishop of Bedford, Dr. 
Walsham How, contributes a remarkable case of perception at 
a distance, which came under the observation of his father. In 
this case the whole details of a distant scene were perceived in a 
dream, and with a minuteness that seemed to exclude any mere 
freak of the imagination on the part of the seer. 



60 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Several cases have come under my notice lately, of an acci- 
dent or a wound in battle (e.g., one in the Zulu war, and one 
in the present campaign in Egypt), occurring to some individual, 
and at the same instant a distant friend has received an intima- 
tion of the occurrence, very much as if a nervous thrill had 
passed through the intervening space, awakening a response in 
a sympathetic mind. These cases fall under the fourth group 
of phe?iomena mentioned in this report. I am indebted to Mrs. G. 
Bidder for the following additional evidence under this head : — 
"A connection of mine was staying with a friend whose husband 
was engaged in making a line of railway in Spain. My friend 
was roused one night by her hostess, who was in a terrible 
fright, and said she was certain her husband was killed in a rail- 
way accident. She had been wakened with a start, and then 
had either seen the occurrence or been told in some way, but 
how, she could not remember. My friend reminded her that 
the railway he was engaged on did not open till the next day, so 
that the accident was unlikely. It turned out, however, that her 
husband had been doubtful of the safety of one part of the line, 
and had insisted on running an engine over it in the night, to 
try it for the next day's opening, and he had been killed. " 

In the memoir of the late Bishop Wilberforce, a similar trans- 
mission of an impression is recorded in the following words : — 
" The Bishop was in his library at Cuddesdon, with three or four 
of his clergy writing with him at the same table. The Bishop 
suddenly raised his hand to his head, and exclaimed : ' I am 
certain that something has happened to one of my sons.' It 
afterwards transpired that just at that time his eldest son, who 
was at sea, had had his foot badly crushed by an accident on 
board his ship." The Bishop himself records this circumstance 
in a letter written at the time, and dated March 4, 1847. " ^ 
is curious," the Bishop writes, " that at the time of his accident, 
I was so possessed with the depressing consciousness of some 
evil having befallen my son Herbert, that at last, on the third 
day after, the 13th, I wrote down that I was quite unable to 
shake off the impression that something had happened to him, 
and noted this down for remembrance. " 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 6l 

Dr. Wilton, of Sutton, Surrey, is my authority for the follow- 
ing case : — 

"A patient of mine, Mr. J. T , a solicitor, about sixty 

years of age, lived a short distance out of London, with his 

family, consisting of a wife and step-daughter, Miss W . 

One December he was asked to go to Edinburgh, to arbitrate in 
some matter of business. Accordingly he left London, expect- 
ing to be away nearly a week. 

" In the early morning of the third day after his departure, 

Mrs. T awoke, and was surprised to find her husband, as 

she thought, standing by her bedside. She exclaimed, ' How 
did you get in without my hearing you ? Wait while I light the 
candle.' She struck a match, and was very astonished at not 
seeing her husband in the room. While she was thinking over 
this singularly vivid delusion, her step-daughter, who occupied 
an adjoining room, knocked at the door, and, on being admitted, 
said, ' O mother, I have had a horrible dream about father, 
and cannot sleep ; I am afraid something has happened to him.' 
In the morning they both told their stories to their maid, and 
subsequently to a gentleman who called while they were at 
breakfast. In the course of the forenoon a telegram arrived 

from Mr. T saying there had been an accident to the 

train in which he had been a passenger, that he was not hurt, 
and would be home in the course of the day. 

"It appears that he had arranged his business much quicker 
than he had expected, and was able to leave Edinburgh by the 
night train; a collision took place a few miles from London, 
owing to a thick fog, and about the time when the two ladies 
were disturbed by their dreams. There was no doubt whatever 
of the truth of this strange coincidence, the ladies having told 
their dreams long before the arrival of the telegram. I 

attended the family many years, and although Mr. T did 

not appear to have sustained injury at the time, he never 
recovered from the nervous shock." 

The " Spectator " publishes the following : — 

" My eldest brother went to New Zealand. One morning my 
sister Emily came down to breakfast, looking very white and 



62 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

queer, and directly she entered the room, said, — 'Ben has met 
with an accident.' Disregarding our incredulous amusement, 
she declared she had seen him with his arm bandaged up, lying 
in a room where there were other beds. We were longer than 
usual in hearing from my brother ; he explained the delay, 
saying his arm had been broken, and that he had been for some 
time in the hospital. Comparing dates, we found he was in- 
jured the day my sister had her vision. — I am, Sir, 

"Anthony Ashley." 

" 3 Buxton Villas, Stratford, August 7." 

Other cases are doubtless known to many who read this, for a 
multitude of similar stories are in existence. Hitherto, as these 
facts arose, the general explanation has been coincidence. It 
has been said, M How many thousands of accidents occur, and 
no knowledge of them has been conveyed to others, except 
through the ordinary means ; but when, by a fortuitous circum- 
stance or a natural foreboding, some friend fancies an accident 
has occurred, and it turns out more or less as imagined, then 
such coincidences are talked about as if they were represent- 
ative, or indicative of a law, whereas they are really nothing 
more than chance shots." This would be a legitimate argument 
if the cases were excessively rare, and so far as our knowledge of 
the facts extends at present, we are not in a position to do more 
than assert that enough well-authenticated cases are on record 
to render explanation by coincidence difficult to entertain with 
any degree of confidence. When to this is added the facts 
detailed in our report — from which I venture to think the only 
fair conclusion is that some mode of supersensuous perception 
not improbably exists — then it seems to me unphilosophical to 
reject, as unworthy of serious examination, all stories such as 
those just narrated. On the other hand — reiterating what has 
been emphatically stated already — wide generalizations are 
altogether premature. Our object here, as elsewhere, is simply 
to collect, collate, and weigh the facts, using, if need be, as a 
working hypothesis, the conclusions drawn from our Buxton 
experiments. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 6$ 

Nor must we forget that other workers have been in this or 
an adjoining field. A list of well-known names might easily be 
compiled who have testified from critical observation that 
during the mesmeric sleep the mind of the mesmeriser can influ- 
ence that of the subject, independently of the ordinary channels 
of sensation. 

The late Dr. Bush, a distinguished scholar, and Professor in 
the University of New York, writes : — " I know that the concep- 
tions of my own mind have been reproduced in another mind 
without any outward signs, and I know that I have not been 
deceived as to the facts averred." 

Dr. Mayo, F.R.S., who was Professor of Physiology and 
Anatomy in King's College, London, and the author of an 
important treatise on "The Nervous System and its Functions," 
gives similar testimony. In connection with this subject, he 
remarks : — "A number of incidents are frequently turning up, 
for the most part on trivial occasions, which we put aside for 
fear of being thought superstitious, because as yet a natural solu- 
tion is not at hand for them. Sympathy in general, the spread 
of panic fears, the simultaneous occurrence of the same thoughts 
to two persons, the intuitive knowledge of mankind possessed 
by some, the magnetic fascination of others, may eventually be 
found to have to do with a special and unsuspected cause." 

The principle underlying these occurrences Dr. Mayo be- 
lieves to be the same that is found in a more striking form in 
mesmeric phenomena. Of the singular relationship that exists 
between the minds of the mesmeriser and his subject, producing 
an apparent community of thought and sensation, Dr. Mayo 
gives experimental evidence precisely similar to what has come 
under my own observation, and in conclusion he states : — "I 
hold that the mind of a living person in its most normal state is 
always, to a certain extent, acting exoneurally, or beyond the 
limits of the bodily person." He remarks that, " It will be 
said that the cases in which I suppose this power manifested are 
of too trivial a nature to justify so novel an hypothesis. My 
answer is, the cases are few and trivial only because the subject 
has not been attended to. For how many centuries were the 



64 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

laws of electricity pre-indicated by the single fact that a piece 
of amber, when rubbed, would attract light bodies. Again, the 
school of physiological materialists will of course be opposed to 
it. They hold that the mind is but a function or product of the 
brain/' 1 

As we have stated in the Report, we have been anxious to 
accumulate and sift experimental evidence as to the facts be- 
fore us, rather than to indulge in theories as to the cause of 
the phenomena. We may, however, conceive of nervous energy 
acting by induction across space as well as by conduction along 
the nerve fibres. In fact the numerous analogies between 
electricity and nervous stimuli would lead to some such infer- 
ence as the above. Or the brain might be regarded as the seat 
of radiant energy like a glowing or a sounding body. In this 
case, the reception of the energy would depend upon a possibility 
of synchronous vibration in the absorbing body ; which, more- 
over, may be constituted like a sensitive flame, in a state of 
unstable equilibrium, so that a distant mental disturbance might 
suddenly and profoundly agitate particular minds whilst others 
might remain quiescent. Further, we may conceive that, just as 
a vibrating tuning-fork or string spends its energy most swiftly 
when it is exciting another- similar fork or string in unison with 
itself, so the activity of the brain may be more speedily ex- 
hausted by the presence of other brains capable of sympathetic 
vibration with itself. 

But speculations such as these are merely of use in suggesting 
lines of experiment. Fpr my own part, I have little doubt that 
a wider and more exact knowledge of psychological phenomena 
will show the insufficiency of any physical analogy or material- 
istic explanation, and thus should tend to accelerate the passage 
of the existing wave of materialism, the crest of which, there 
seems reason to believe, has already gone over us. 

The following extract from a letter in the " Sussex Daily News " 
is of some interest in connection with the mode of experiment 
pursued by Mr. Bishop. The subject of thought-reading having 

1 "Truths contained in Popular Superstitions," p. 68 et seq. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 65 

been -discussed, "It was proposed that we should attempt the 
experiment. Accordingly I was blindfolded and left the room. 
Whilst I was absent, a reel of black cotton was secreted in a 
flower-pot near the window. On pressing the hand of the 
gentleman w T ho had secreted it against my forehead, and 
requesting him to think of the object he had hidden, I saw 
plainly with my blindfolded eyes, as though in a dream, the 
figure of a reel of black cotton floating before me. I then told 
him to think of where he had hidden it, and I saw and led him 
to a bureau at the opposite end of the room to the window. 
This he said was wrong, but on inquiry I found that he 
had originally intended to have placed it there, but had altered 
his mind. We then tried the question of localizing a pain. 
Being blindfolded, and holding my friend's left hand against my 
forehead, I told him to imagine a pain. Almost immediately I 
felt a peculiar, indescribable sensation on the right side of my 
face, and told him that he was thinking of a pain there. He 
was, in fact, imagining a violent attack of neuralgia in the right 
upper jaw. Other experiments were tried, and have been tried 
since, some successful, some unsuccessful, but I have seen quite 
enough to convince me that there is truth in it. I don't pretend 
to offer a reason, but I would say to those who disbelieve it, 
'Try for yourselves.' All do not possess the power. I was 
the only one of a party of six or seven who was thus affected, 
but, doubtless, there are very many who could perform precisely 
the same experiments, and by continued inquiry it may be that 
the mystery will be solved. — I am yours, &c, 

" Henry Edmonds, B. Sc. (London). 

" Brighton School of Science and Art." 

The following extract from a letter published in "Light" 
shows that a Mr. Smith, of Brighton, has powers analogous to 
those claimed by Mr. Bishop : — "The way Mr. Smith conducts 
his experiment is this : He places himself en rapport with myself 
by taking my hands ; and a strong concentration of will and 
mental vision on my part has enabled him to read my thoughts 
with an accuracy that approaches the miraculous. Not only 



66 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

can he, with slight hesitation, read numbers, words, and even 
whole sentences which I alone have seen, but the sympathy 
between us has been developed to such a degree that he rarely 
fails to experience the taste of any liquid or solid I choose to 
imagine. He has named, described, or discovered small arti- 
cles he has never seen when they have been concealed by me in 
the most unusual places, and on two occasions he has success- 
fully described portions of a scene which I either imagined or 
actually saw. 

" Douglas Blackburn, Editor of ' Brightonian.' 

" 24 Duke Street, Brighton." 

Mr. Bishop has lately been good enough to give me an 
opportunity of trying his powers. In the first instance, by 
means of a confederate, he showed the wonderful perfection 
to which he has carried fictitious thought-reading, indicating 
objects, names, or figures by means of a pre-arranged code. 
Thus his confederate, who was seated back to us and blind- 
folded in another part of the room, told us, — in answer to a 
succession of seemingly casual questions on the part of Mr. 
Bishop — the whole particulars of a Bank of England cheque 
which a friend of mine happened to have in his pocket, the na- 
ture, number, and date of the cheque, the person in whose favor 
it was drawn, the person who drew the cheque, and the bankers 
in whose favor it was crossed ; Mr. Bishop, of course, looking at 
the cheque from time to time. Mr. Bishop then showed what 
he believes to be the genuine power of thought-reading that he 
possesses. Some striking things were done ; for example, he wrote 
with his finger on the door certain figures corresponding to those 
that I had put on paper and was thinking of, but had shown 
to no one else, his hand pressing mine tightly against his fore- 
head. He also twice discovered the exact locality of a pain that 
I fixed upon, in one case with extreme accuracy, but he did not 
succeed so well with a friend ; in this case also he pressed the 
hand of the subject against his own forehead. He next tried 
some experiments without contact, his hand being held very 
near mine ; in this way he moved backwards and forwards 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 6j 

across the room in the precise direction that I had previously, in 
his absence, written down ; other experiments without contact 
were not quite so successful. It is, however, very difficult to 
arrive at any satisfactory conclusions from these experiments, 
owing to the extraordinary pantomime and wriggling excited 
action which Mr. Bishop invariably employs, so utterly different 
from the silent, passive condition to which we have been accus- 
tomed in the experiments recorded in our report. 

In closing its first report the Committee on Thought-Trans- 
ference says : — 

We cannot pretend that this inquiry is as yet more than in its 
infancy, and we would deprecate the premature formation of 
theories on the subject. The phenomena here described are so 
unlike any which have been brought within the sphere of recog- 
nized science, as to subject the mind to two opposite dangers. 
Wild hypotheses as to how they happen are confronted with 
equally wild assertions that they cannot happen at all. Of the 
two, the assumption of a priori impossibility is, perhaps, in the 
present state of our knowledge of Nature, the most to be 
deprecated ; though it cannot be considered in any way sur- 
prising. 

At the same time it may serve to disarm purely a priori 
criticism if we point out that the word " thought-reading " is 
merely used as a popular and provisional description, and is in 
no way intended to exclude an explanation resting on a physical 
basis. It is quite open to surmise some sort of analogy to the 
familiar phenomena of the transmission and reception of vibratory 
energy. A swinging pendulum suspended from a solid support 
will throw into synchronous vibration another pendulum attached 
to the same support, if the period of oscillation of the two be the 
same; the medium of transmission here being the solid material 
of the support. One tuning-fork or string in unison with an- 
other will communicate its impulses through the medium of the 
air. Glowing particles of a gas, acting through the medium of 
the luminiferous ether, can throw into sympathetic vibration 
cool molecules of the same substance at a distance. A perma- 
nent magnet- brought into a room will throw any surrounding 



68 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

iron into a condition similar to its own ; and here the medium of 
communication is unknown, though the fact is undisputed. 
Similarly, we may conceive, if we please, with many modern 
philosophers, that for every thought there is a corresponding 
motion of the particles of the brain, and that this vibration of 
molecules of brain-stuff may be communicated to an intervening 
medium, and so pass under certain circumstances from one 
brain to another, with a corresponding simultaneity of impres- 
sions. No more than in the case of the magnetic phenomena is 
any investigator bound to determine the medium before inquir- 
ing into the fact of transit. On the other hand, the possibility 
must not be overlooked that further advances along the lines of 
research here indicated may, and we believe will, necessitate 
a modification of that general view of the relation of mind to 
matter to which modern science has long been gravitating. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 69 



III. 

The second report of the Committee on Thought-Transference 
was submitted to the Society Dec. 9, 1882. It was as follows : — 

The first Report of the Committee on Thought-reading, pre- 
sented to the Society on July 17, 1882, established, as we venture 
to affirm, the following conclusions : — 

(1). That much of what is popularly known as "Thought- 
reading " is in reality due to the interpretation by the so-called 
" Reader " of signs, consciously or unconsciously imparted by 
the touches, looks, or gestures of those present ; and that this is 
to be taken as the prima facie explanation, whenever the thing 
thought of is not some visible or audible object, but some action 
or movement to be performed. 

(2). That there does exist a group of phenomena to which the 
word " thought-reading," or, as we prefer to call it, thought-trans- 
ference, may be fairly applied ; and which consist in the mental 
perception, by certain individuals at certain times, of a word or 
other object kept vividly before the mind of another person or 
persons, without any transmission of impression through the 
recognized channels of sense. 

We have been fortunate enough to obtain a much larger 
amount of adhesion to this view than its startling character had 
permitted us to expect. Some valuable coadjutors have shown 
their approval by joining our body ; and the wide notice which 
has been taken of the research, in the press and in society, has 
started, we trust, many sets of experiments, from which useful 
results may be fairly anticipated. Criticism has, of course, been 
by no means entirely favorable, and we had had some idea of 
prefacing our description of further experiments by a detailed 
reply to some of the objections which have been taken to our 
former report. But an attentive study of those objections has 
failed to supply us with much controversial matter worthy of 
occupying the time of the present meeting. They may, we 



70 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

think, be completely answered from the pages of the Report 
itself. One lesson, indeed, our critics have taught us, — the im- 
portance of the directest statements, and the largest letters, in a 
paper containing complex or novel matter, which is to meet the 
eye of the ordinary reviewer. For most of the criticisms on our 
first Report were founded on the assumption that it does not 
contain what in fact it does contain, — if only the reader will take 
the trouble to read it. To take the main point, we based our 
conviction of the reality of the phenomena on experiments made 
when no?ie of the Creery family were cognizant of the object selected, 
A feeling of courtesy (not, we trust, necessarily unscientific) pre- 
vented us from saying, an so many words, "It will thus be seen 
that our results hold good, however much the Creery family may 
have been in league to cheat us." 

We fully agree with our critics that both conscious and uncon- 
scious deception must be most carefully guarded against in all 
these cases. We shall continue to take all the precautions which 
experience suggests, and clearly to indicate in our Reports that 
we have taken them. But we must beg our future reviewers to 
read those reports with sufficient care to absolve us from saying 
in plain words, at every turn, "This we did to prevent Mr. A. 
from slyly glancing at the card ; " " This precaution was taken 
for fear Miss B. should be telling a lie." It is part of the wis- 
dom of the serpent not to discuss too obtrusively the harmlessness 
of the dove. 

We could easily reply seriatim to all the objections that have 
been brought; as, for instance, that we have not stated that 
silence was preserved during the experiments, whereas we have 
stated it over and over again ; or that the child might have 
known which card we were likely to choose, whereas we have 
stated that the cards were drawn at random from a full pack. 
Does the hypothesis, further, include the likelihood of the child's 
guessing that our minds would be irresistibly directed to the 
names Arthur Higgins and Esther Ogle, names w'hich we trust 
our free-will enough to believe that we invented in the act of 
writing them down ? Such detailed refutation, however obvious, 
might possibly be worth working through, did the whole case for 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 7 1 

thought-reading depend on this one series of experiments. As 
the case stands, however, we think we may fairly pass on, without 
more ado, to fresh matter. 

The chief part of the first Report dealt with a series of experi- 
ments on thought-reading made at Buxton, with the young 
daughters of the Rev. A. M. Creery. The committee felt it 
desirable that the experiments with this family should be repeated 
elsewhere, and accordingly Mr. Myers invited the committee to 
meet the Misses Creery at his house, Leckhampton, Cambridge, 
during the summer vacation. In addition to Mr, Myers, Mr. 
Gurney, and Mr. Barrett, Mrs. Myers and Miss M. Mason were 
also present. 

The experiments began on July 3,1, 1882, and were continued 
day by day for ten days. The experiments were made with the 
three Misses Creery, — Mary, age 17, Alice, age 15, Maud, 13, — 
and were varied in many ways. Sometimes (though in a decided 
minority of cases) the two children who were not guessing knew 
w r hat we had selected. The percentage of success in these cases 
was not appreciably above the average percentage of the whole 
series. Sometimes the guesser was outside a thick closed door, 
sometimes secluded by a thick curtain, in full observation of one 
of the committee. On several occasions the children were 
tested, one by one, alone. Professor Barrett's results under 
these conditions, and Miss Mason's under the same conditions, 
and with the child outside the door, were decidedly striking. 

The fluctuations in success were very remarkable. Thus, on 
one day, August 1, when the guesser was outside the closed 
door, twenty-seven trials with cards gave not a single correct 
result; merely seven partial successes, as eight of diamonds for 
seven. of diamonds. Whereas on August 3, apparently under 
precisely similar conditions, the guesser being outside the closed 
door, and no sound of any kind permitted within the room where 
we, who knew the card, sat, ten trials gave two completely right 
and two almost right; and on August 4, twenty-five trials, under 
exactly the same conditions, gave two completely right and two 
partially right. 



72 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Here are the details of the trials on August 3. 

Evening of August 3, 1882. 

Miss Mary Creery outside the closed and locked door, and a 
yard or two from it, in the company of one of the committee, 
who observed her attentively. A card chosen by one of the 
committee cutting a pack ; the fact of the card being selected 
indicated to the guesser by a single tap on the door. The 
selected card placed in view of all the sitters, who kept their 
minds intently fixed on the name of the card. After the guesser 
had named a card loudly enough to be heard through the door, 
the words " No " or " Right " said by one of us ; otherwise com- 
plete silence preserved. 

The cards chosen by us are printed in italics, the guesses in 
Roman type. Two guesses only allowed. 

1. Three of hearts. — Ten of spades (No). King of clubs 
(No). 

2. Seven of clubs. — Nine of diamonds (No). Seven of hearts 
(No). 

3. Ten of diamonds. — Queen of spades (No). Ten of dia- 
monds (Right). 

4. Eight of spades. — King of clubs (No). Ten of spades (No). 

5. Nine of hearts. — Nine of clubs (No). Ace of hearts (No). 

6. Three of diamonds. — Six of diamonds (No). Ten of dia- 
monds (No). 

7. Knave of spades. — King of spades (No). Queen of 
clubs (No). 

8. Six of spades. — Six of spades (Right). 

9. Queen of clubs. — Queen of diamonds (No). Ten of clubs 
(No). 

10. Two of clubs. — Ten of diamonds (No). Ace of dia- 
monds (No). 

It may be remarked that, in addition to the two completely 
right answers in this series, there were several close approxi- 
mations ; and though the success was very imperfect, we give 
the result in detail, in order that those who feel disposed may, 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 73 

experimentally, compare them with any series determined by 
chance alone. 

Anxiety to secure success on the part of the subject of experi- 
ment is nearly always fatal and always prejudicial ; hence the 
little trepidation that exists when set trials are made, or trials 
before strangers, tells most unfavorably. We found that casual 
experiments, when the subject was under no mental restraint, 
gave very satisfactory results, albeit on such occasions our pre- 
cautions to avoid erroneous convictions were in no way relaxed. 

On the morning of August 4 such a casual trial was made, 
Mrs, Myers and Professor Barrett only knowing the card selected. 
Eight experiments were made ; of these, three cards were guessed 
completely right — two of them at the first attempt and the third 
at the second attempt. In this last case the first guess was the 
nine of clubs, the second the nine of spades, that being the card 
chosen. In addition to these the suit was given rightly three out 
of the remaining five times, the pips or court card twice out of 
the five. It is instructive to note that immediately after this 
experiment the two younger sisters of the guesser were called 
in and allowed to know the card chosen by Mrs. Myers and 
Professor Barrett. The results, compared with the preceding, 
were as follows : — 

Without the sisters knowing. — Eight trials. Completely right 
three times, two of them the first try. 

With the sisters knowing. — Seven trials. Completely right 
three times, two of them on the first trial ; and to make the 
coincidences more curious, the partial successes were identical 
in number with the previous trial. 

Other casual trials w r ere made by single members of the com- 
mittee, he alone knowing the word or card selected. 

Thus, on August 5, Professor Barrett tried with Miss Creery 
numbers of two figures ; two attempts were generally allowed to 
each. The following results were obtained. The number 
chosen is in italics: — 

Answer. Answer. 

18. 16 and then 18 were said. 48, 48 said at once. 
29. 26 " 29 " 31. 71 and then 61. 



74 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Answer. Answer. 

52. 35 and then 25 were said. 21. 22 said (one trial only given). 

33- 53 " 58 "" 36. 16 

76. 17 " 36 " 2c?. 28 

92. 10 

Here, out of 1 1 experiments, four were guessed rightly (2 at the 
first attempt), and 4 bore some resemblance to the figure chosen, 
as 25 the inversion of 52, the number chosen. This inversion 
of figures not infrequently occurred, together with what seemed 
like piecemeal guessing of the figures, which were, of course, 
counted as failures, such as 17 and 36 for 76. These guesses 
may be nothing more than pure coincidence, but taken in con- 
junction with our similar experience with cards, they would 
seem to indicate that often mental glimpses of the thing selected 
are obtained, more or less faint and fugitive, and sometimes 
perverted, as if the figures had been seen from their reflection 
in a mirror. 

A remarkable instance of this partial perception of the thing 
selected occurred on August 2. On this occasion all the Com- 
mittee were present ; two of the sisters of the guesser were also 
in the room, and knew the card selected ; they were, however, 
so placed that (though they were completely in our view) only 
the tops of their heads were visible to the guesser, and they 
remained quite motionless and silent throughout the experi- 
ments. Out of 32 experiments with cards, 5 were guessed com- 
pletely right at the first attempt, and, in addition, 20 were 
partially right. Fourteen times running the suit was named 
correctly on the first trial, and reiterated on the second ; not 
only was no indication whatever given to show that the suit was 
rightly named, but our impassive countenances and the solitary 
word " No " failed to displace from the percipient's mind the 
correct impression of the suit. The chances against success in 
naming the suit rightly in anyone case are, of course, 3 to 1, but 
the chances against being right fourteen times consecutively are 
4,782,969 to 1. That is to say, if the words "clubs," " dia- 
monds," "hearts," and "spades" were written on slips of card 
and shaken up in a bag, we might very likely have to try four 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 75 

or five million times before pulling out, fourteen times in succes- 
sion, the particular word fixed upon. 

To vary the wearisome monotony of our experiments, a num- 
ber of trials were made at Cambridge in piecing together the 
letters of certain difficult words fixed upon by us. The letters 
forming the word, — which was always some out-of-the way Latin 
or botanical term unlikely to be divined by mere guesswork, — 
were selected by us from a box of letters ; the confused heap 
was then taken to one of the Misses Creery, who was seated in 
an adjoining room. Some of these trials were very successful, 
but we abandoned this method of experiment as open to the 
possible objection that even children might gain some hint of 
the sequence of letters from an instinct of the probabilities of 
language. We give, however, a couple of instances out of some 
twenty similar trials. Here none but one or two of ourselves 
knew the word selected ; the letters were chosen by us and then 
mixed up ; the guesser, seated with her back to us, picked out 
the letters as we silently and successively thought of them. The 
figures under the letters indicate the number of trials before 
success was obtained ; thus, i means right on the first trial, 2 
right on the second, and so on. No word was spoken except 
" No " and " Yes." 

Hedypnois Phys aloides 

111121111 12411114111 

Not reckoning these experiments with letters, our experiments 
during the meeting of the full committee at Cambridge may be 
summed up as follows : — 

With a full pack of playing cards, 248 trials were made with 
one or more of the committee. Of these, 22 were guessed com- 
pletely right on the first trial, and 18. on the second trial, or a 
total of 40 quite right out of 248 ; or 1 right in not quite 7 
experiments. In addition, there were 69 cases in which the 
card was guessed in part correctly. Omitting the second correct 
guess, the results with playing cards show one quite right in 11 
experiments ; if pure guesswork were the explanation, there would 
have been about one right in 52 experiments. 



?6 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

With the exception of the 32 experiments described above, 
and which we deemed so unexceptionable that they were 
included, all these experiments were made when the Misses 
Creery were excluded from a knowledge of the card we had 
selected. 

In like manner, while we alone knew the thing selected, 64 
trials were made with figures ranging between 10 and 99. Of 
these, 5 were correctly named at the first trial, and 6 at the 
second — a total of 1 1 right out of 64, or about 1 in 6 ; and, in 
addition, 18 trials were nearly right. Omitting the second correct 
guess, the results with figures show one right in not quite ij 
experiments ; pure guesswork would have given about one right i?i 
go experiments. 

Two of the Misses Creery having lately been on a visit to Dub- 
lin, one of our number, Professor Barrett, took the opportunity 
of continuing the trials, and obtained some interesting results. 
Here also a series of trials were made with the young percipient 
secluded behind an opaque curtain ; her sister was allowed to 
know the card, but no audible signal could pass without its 
instant detection, and visual signs were rendered impossible. 1 
In this way 14 trials, made on Nov. 27, with a full pack of 
playing cards, gave 4 completely right on the first try, and 2 on 
the second try ; and, in addition, on an analysis of the results, 
the name of the suit w r as found to have been correctly given 
five times running, and reiterated on the second trial. Some 
experiments made under exactly similar conditions, a day or two 
later, gave 2 successes on the first trial out of a total of 8, and, 
except in the last trial, the suit was named correctly each time ; 
here only one answer in each case was allowed. These, it is 
true, are specimens of results where the amount of success was 
above the average ; which may, perhaps, partly be accounted for 
by the sister's assistance in the mental picturing of the card, or 

1 Although our previous experience had not much favored the sugges- 
tion, it was thought desirable further to test whether some rapport or sym- 
pathetic relation between the sisters might conduce to the desired result. 
This explains my allowing the other sister to be present and see the card in 
some of these experiments. — W. F. B. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. *]J 

by the percipient's having had a long respite from the irksome 
effort of concentration ; but doubtless the chief element of suc- 
cess in this case was freedom from anxiety, as the percipient 
believed they were mere casual experiments, and could not see 
that the results were being formally taken down. 

Altogether, in Professor Barrett's house, 109 trials were made 
with playing cards : of these, 19 were right on the first trial, and 
7 on the second, and, in addition, 2 others were rightly corrected 
on a third attempt, though to grant this was against our usual 
practice. Altogether, this makes 28 completely right out of 
109, and 26 other trials were nearly right. But confining our- 
selves to the first guess, the results showed 1 right in not quite 6 
trials ; pure guesswork would give 1 right in 52 trials. In the 
large majority of these trials the second sister did ?wt know the 
card selected. 

One hundred and forty-three experiments were also made with 
words and figures, Professor Barrett only knowing the thing he 
had selected. The chance was here more limited, being on an 
average about 1 in 16. Of these 143 experiments, 53 were quite 
successful on the first and 23 on the second trial. Excluding 
the second trial, the successful results were rather more than 1 in J ; 
pure chance would have given 1 in 16. For the purpose of com- 
parison, 27 experiments were made, in which the other sister 
was allowed to be present and to know the figure, this being 
selected as before out of a set of 16. Out of the 27 experi- 
ments, 8 were successful on the first trial, and 1 on the second ; 
omitting this, we have rather less than 1 in 3 right, showing that 
the presence and assistance of the sister here made no appre- 
ciable difference in the results. 

A consecutive series of 50 experiments were made at one sit- 
ting to test the effect of fatigue. Besides Professor Barrett and 
Miss Alice Creery, who was seated with her back to the former, 
no o?ie else was present in the room. The words " hearts," "clubs," 
"spades," and "diamonds" were written down by Mr. Barrett, 
and one of these w r ords mentally selected by him. 1 Out of the 50 

1 The percipient, it should be remarked, knew that these four words were 



78 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

trials, the word selected was named rightly 25 times on the first 
trial ; and a second trial being allowed (though of no value as a 
test), the right answer was then given 10 times, making a total 
of 35 out of 50. The series occupied about 20 minutes, and the 
guessing was slower in the latter half of the time. 

During the first 10 minutes. 
30 experiments were made. 
Of these 18 were right on the first trial. 

8 " " second trial, 

or 4 wholly wrong. 

During the second 10 minutes, 
20 experiments were made. 
Of these, 7 were right on the first trial. 

2 " " second trial, 

or 11 wholly wrong. 

So that about 1 in 7 trials was wholly wrong in the first half 
of the time, and about 1 in 2 was wrong in the second half. 

It was also noticed incidentally that the longer word, " dia- 
monds," was guessed with more difficulty than the remaining 
monosyllables, thus — 

" Diamonds " was wholly wrong 6 times out of 12. 
" Spades" " " 2 " 11. 

"Hearts" " " 3 " 13. 

"Clubs" " " 4 " 14. 

Indications were given in other trials, made with a selection 
of monosyllables phonetically unlike, that certain sounds were 
guessed more easily than others ; thus, the word cups was more 
frequently wrong than tongs or hats. But a much larger range 
of experiments is needed before any generalization in this direc- 
tion can be attempted. It will probably be remarked that the 

selected, and she was to guess one of them. We hope the reader will credit 
us with being fully alive to the fact of the necessity of avoiding any move- 
ment which might serve as a hint to the guesser. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 79 

average of success in the above experiments, though far above 
what chance alone could have supplied, falls considerably below 
the level attained in the trials with the same children which 
were described in our previous report ; and (as will have been 
seen) this decline in power equally showed itself whether the^ 
remaining members of the Creery family were or were not cog- 
nizant of the object to be guessed. The fact seems to be (and 
the children themselves are regretfully conscious of it) that the 
capacity is gradually leaving them, — a fresh illustration of the 
fleeting character which seems to attach to this and other forms 
of abnormal sensitiveness. En revanche, we find the capacity 
present, to a degree admitting of valuable experiment, in a far 
larger number of persons than we had at first supposed. To 
those who desire to extend knowledge in this direction, the fol- 
lowing queries suggest lines of useful inquiry : — 

i. A natural impressibility being assumed, what are the 
further conditions which determine or modify success. 

2. Is the transferred impression phonetic, or visual, or inde- 
terminate ? 

3. How far do impressions of drawings or geometrical fig- 
ures, inexpressible in descriptive words, admit of being trans- 
ferred ? 

4. Are there any peculiar features in this latter form of 
transference, such as the inversion or perversion of the object, 
etc. ? 

To the third query we have unexpectedly received from some 
recent experiments a most definite and satisfactory answer. 
With a description of these experiments we must conclude the 
present report. 

Mr. Blackburn, of Brighton, an associate of our Society, and 
who is a very painstaking and accurate observer, had obtained 
remarkable results in thought-reading, or will-impression, with a 
Mr. G. A. Smith, a young mesmerist living at Brighton. 

We entered into correspondence with Mr. Blackburn, who 
thereupon took the trouble to send us a paper recording in 
detail his experiments with Mr. Smith. These statements 
appeared to be so carefully made that two of our number, Mr. 



80 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Myers and Mr. Gurney (Mr. Barrett being unable to go at the 
time), arranged to pay a visit to Brighton personally to inves- 
tigate the joint experiments of Mr. Blackburn and Mr. Smith. 
These gentlemen most obligingly placed themselves at our 
service, and a series of trials were made in our own lodgings at 
Brighton. The results of these trials give us the most important 
and valuable insight into the manner of the mental transfer of 
a picture which we have yet obtained. 

Mr. Blackburn has frequently practised thought-reading with 
Mr. Smith ; but at the time when our first experiments were 
made, he had been accustomed to hold Mr. Smith's hand, or 
touch his forehead, with a view to communicating the impres- 
sion. No unconscious pressure, however, could have communi- 
cated to the subject the definite words and pictures enumerated 
below. Though some of the early experiments are not striking, 
we prefer to give the whole series, that a due estimate may 
be formed of the chances against mere coincidence as an 
explanation. 

Experiments made at our own Rooms, Brighton, Dec. 
3, 1882. Present: Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, 
Mr. Douglas Blackburn, hereafter called B., and Mr. G. A. 
Smith, hereafter called S. 

S. was blindfolded at his own wish, to aid in concentration, 
and during the experiment sat with his back turned to the 
experimenters. 

B. holds S.'s hand, and asks him to name a color, written 
down by one of us and shown to B. It is needless to say the 
strictest silence was preserved during each experiment. 1 

Color Selected. Answer. 

Expt. i. Gold Gilt, color of picture frame. 

" 2. Light wood .... Dark brown, slaty. 

" 3. Crimson Fiery-looking, red. 

" 4. Black Dark, black. 

1 Nothing was said when S. named the color, and where more than one 
color is mentioned he gave the colors successively without fresh question. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 8 1 

Color Selected. Answer. 

Expt. 5. Oxford blue .... Yellow, gray, blue. 

" 6. White Green, white. 

" 7. Orange Reddish brown. 

" 8. Black I am tired, and see nothing. 

After a rest, numbers were then tried in the same way. 

Number Selected. Answer. 

Expt 9 35 34 

" 10 48 58 

"11 7 ..... • 7 

Several trials of colors and numbers were now made with S. 
and B. in separate rooms, which failed. Names were next tried, 
written down and shown to B., who then took S.'s hand as 
before. There was, as usual, no sound nor movement of the 
lips on the part of any one. 

Answer. 

Harland, Barnard. 
Humphreys, Ben Nevis, Benaris. 
Jobson, Johnson. 
Rembrandt Steeth, Regent Street. 

Two names were then tried without any contact, as follows : — 

Name Chosen. Answer. 

Expt. 16. Hobhouse Hunter. 

" 17. Black Drake, Blake. 

Contact between S. and B. was now resumed by our express 
desire, as the increased effort of concentration, needed when 
there was no contact, brought on neuralgia in B. 

Name Chosen. Answer. 

Expt. 18. Queen Anne .... Queechy, Queen. 
" 19. Wissenschaft .... Wissie, Wissenaft. 





Name Chosen. 


Expt. 12. 


Barnard . . 


" 13. 


Bellairs . . 


" 14. 


Johnson . . 


" i5- 


Regent Street 



82 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

As B. was ignorant of German, he mentally represented the 
word " Wissenschaft " in English fashion. 

Pains were then experimented on. One of us held a sofa 
cushion close before S.'s face, so that vision of anything on the 
other side of it was absolutely impossible (he was also blind- 
folded) ; and the other pinched or otherwise hurt B., who sat 
opposite S., holding his outstretched hand. S. in each case 
localized the pain in his own person, after it had been kept up 
pretty severely upon B.'s person for a time varying from one to 
two minutes. 

Part rendered Painful. Answer (by pointing). 

Expt. 20. Left upper arm . . . Left upper arm. 

" 21. Lobe of right ear . . . Lobe of right ear. 

" 22. Hair on top of head . . Hair on top of head. 

" 23. Left knee Left knee. 

These experiments were very striking in the accuracy of the 
indications given by S. This form of transmission of sensations 
might with advantage be more widely attempted. 

We next drew a series of diagrams of a simple geometrical 
kind, which were placed behind S., so that B. could see them. 
S. described them in each case correctly, except that he gener- 
ally reversed them, seeing the upper side of the diagram down- 
ward, the right-hand side to the left, etc. 

Next day (December 4) we varied this experiment, thus : — 




Description. — A trian- 
Expt. 24. //(\ &l e > wu ^ n a P ex downwards ; 

and some loose lines. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



83 



Expt. 25 




lein 



Description. — Triangle lr 
a circle, and straight line point- 
ing downwards. 



Expt. 26. — A large arrow was drawn, and variously moved 
about, in order to discover whether the reversal of the image 
was maintained. In every case it was described as pointing to 
right when it pointed to left, downwards when it pointed upwards, 
and so on. 



Expt. 27. 
Figure held 
upside down 
as shown. 




Description. — I see a sort 
of circle ; a streak, with a lump 
at the top ; an " Aunt Sally " 
sort of thing. 



One of us, completely out of sight of S., drew some figure at 
random, the figure being of such a character that its shape 
could not be easily conveyed in words ; this was done in order 
to meet the assumption that some code — such as the Morse 
alphabet — was used by S. and B. The figure drawn by us was 
then shown to B. for a few moments, — S. being seated all the 



84 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

time with his back to us and blindfolded, in a distant part of the 
same room, and subsequently in an adjoining room. 

B. looked at the figure drawn; then held S.'s hand for a 
while ; then released it. After being released, S. (who remained 
blindfolded) drew the impression of a figure which he had 
received. It was generally about as like the original as a child's 
blindfold drawing of a pig is like a pig ; that is to say, it was a 
scrawl, but recognizable as intended to represent the original 
figure. In no case was there the smallest possibility that S. 
could have seen the original figure ; and in no case did B. touch 
S., even in the slightest manner, while the figure was being 
drawn. 

In one case, No. 6 in the series, the copy may be said to be 
as exact as S. could have drawn it blindfold if he had previously 
seen the original. The figures were not reversed on this day, as 
they had been on the previous one. 

The whole series of figures (nine in number) are given in the 
accompanying plates. The number indicates the order in 
which they were drawn ; the original drawing made by us is 
shown in the upper half of the plate, its reproduction by S. on 
the lower half. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



85 



No. i. — Original Drawing. 




No. i. — Reproduction. 




86 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 2. — Original Drawing. 




No. 2. — Reproduction. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



87 



No. 3. — Original Drawing. 




No. 3. — Reproduction. 




88 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 4. — Original Drawing. 




No. 4. — Reproduction, 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



8 9 



No. 5. — Original Drawing. 




V 



No, 5. — Reproduction. 




9Q 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 6. — Original Drawing. 




No. 6. — Reproduction. 






The figures in this and the next drawing indicate successive attempts, as if 
the mental picture were " glimpsed " piecemeal. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 
No. 7.— Original Drawing. 



91 




No. 7. — Reproduction. 




9 2 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 8. — Original Drawing. 




No. 8. — Reproduction. 




No. 9. — Original Drawing. 



No. 9. — Reproduction. 





Mr. S. touched the spot to which 
the arrow points, and said : " There 
is something more there, but I cannot 
tell what it is." 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 93 



IV. 

On April 24, 1884, the Committee on Thought-Transference 
submitted a third Report. The committee had been enlarged, 
and consisted of Edmund Gurney, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity 
College, Cambridge; F. W. H. Myers, M. A., late fellow of 
Trinity College, Cambridge ; F. Podmore, B.A. , and Professor 
Barrett. The Report is as follows : — 

At the close of the last Report a series of experiments were 
recorded, illustrating the reproduction of drawings without any 
discernible communication passing between the agent, Mr. 
Blackburn, who had momentarily seen the drawing made by one 
of us, and the percipient, Mr. G. A. Smith, who was blindfolded 
throughout the experiment. In these early experiments Mr. 
Smith held Mr. Blackburn's hand for a few moments, and then, 
releasing it, drew his impression of the figure. In this way we ob- 
tained a rough, but recognizable, reproduction of the nine figures 
which we had drawn. We have now to record a further exten- 
sion of our inquiry in this direction, the experiments being made 
under conditions still more stringent than those at first imposed. 
We have also endeavored to ascertain how far the curious inver- 
sion of the figures, which had been noticed in the descriptions, 
but not in the pencil reproductions of the drawings, was acci- 
dental or otherwise. 

At the invitation of the committee, Mr. Blackburn and Mr. 
Smith came from Brighton in January last, and met us at the 
rooms of the Society in Dean's Yard, where all the experiments 
about to be described were conducted. As Mr. Blackburn came 
only in answer to the urgent request of the committee, and at 
considerable inconvenience to himself, we feel it our duty to 
mention this fact, and, at the same time, to express our hearty 
obligations to him for the unrecompensed trouble which we have 
so frequently imposed upon him. 



94 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

It is almost needless to point out that in these observations, so 
foreign to our common experience, it is indispensable to be 
minutely careful and conscientious in recording the exact condi- 
tions of each experiment. This we have striven to be ; and the 
reader will thus be enabled to form an independent judgment 
by making allowance for whatever mental bias he may discover 
in our conclusions. He has thus, moreover, the means afforded 
him of detecting possible errors, or of suggesting precautions 
w T hich we may have overlooked. 

Our modus operandi is as follows : The percipient, Mr. Smith, 
is seated blindfolded at a table in our own room ; a paper and 
pencil are within his reach, and a member of the committee 
is seated by his side. Another member of the committee leaves 
the room, and outside the closed door draws some figure at 
random. Mr. Blackburn, who, so far, has remained in the 
room with Mr. Smith, is now called out, and the door closed ; 
the drawing is then held before him for a few seconds, till its 
impression is stamped upon his mind. Then closing his eyes, 
Mr. Blackburn is led back into the room and placed standing or 
sitting behind Mr. Smith, at a distance of some tw r o feet from 
him. A brief period of intense mental concentration on Mr. 
Blackburn's part now follows. Presently Mr. Smith takes up 
the pencil amidst the unbroken and absolute silence of all 
present, and attempts to reproduce on paper the inpression he 
has gained. He is allowed to do as he pleases as regards the 
bandage round his eyes ; sometimes he pulls it down before he 
begins to draw, but if the figures be not distinctly present to his 
mind, he prefers to let it remain on, and draws fragments of the 
figure as they are perceived. During all this time, Mr. Black- 
burn's eyes are, generally, firmly closed (sometimes he requests 
us to bandage his eyes tightly as an aid to concentration), and 
except when it is distinctly recorded, he has not touched Mr. 
Smith, and has not gone in front of him, or in any way within 
his possible field of vision, since he re-entered the room. 1 

1 This precaution was not attended to in the experiments of one afternoon ; 
but these experiments, and these alone, are omitted from the series dis- 
cussed below, as having been rendered nugatory through accidental circum- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 95 

When Mr. Smith has drawn what he can, the original draw- 
ing, which has so far remained outside the room, is brought in 
and compared with the reproduction. Both are marked by the 
committee and put away in a secure place. The drawings and 
reproductions given in this volume are in every case fac-similes 
of the untouched originals. 

The experiments began on January 19, 1883, and were 
continued for three or four days in succession. During this 
series of experiments a considerable number of drawings were 
made, nearly all of which were exhibited at the following 
General Meeting. Another series of experiments were made in 
April. All the drawings may be seen at the Society's rooms ; 
but it was thought unnecessary to reproduce the whole number. 
Those which are omitted, however, are by no means failures, 
and in fact only eight experiments, out of the total of thirty- 
seven, can be put down as unsuccessful, Mr. Smith in four 
cases failing to see anything, and in four cases giving so 
imperfect a representation that it might be called a failure. 
The first four figures were obtained after Mr. Blackburn had 
for a few minutes grasped Mr. Smith's hand — a procedure 
to which they were accustomed — as a supposed aid to Mr. 
Smith in visualizing Mr. Blackburn's mental picture. We, 
however, could allow no exception to our cardinal axiom on 
this subject, that no experiment where contact of any sort is 
allowed can be decisive ; and though in the present instance the 
drawings were of such an irregular character that their descrip- 
tion would have been extremely difficult to convey by imper- 
ceptible tracing or by any subtle code of pressure-signs, yet, 
assuming Mr. Blackburn and Mr. Smith to have been in 
collusion, the hypothesis was at least conceivable. Accordingly, 
we requested Mr. Blackburn to dispense altogether with the 
preliminary contact ; and it must be understood that all the rest 
of the successful drawings (with the exception of two, not here 
reproduced, and of Fig. i3 b as explained) were done without 
any contact whatever, in the manner already indicated. Down 

stances which were calculated to exercise, and obviously did exercise, a 
distracting effect on Mr. Blackburn's mind. 



g6 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

to Fig. 9 we had made rude geometrical drawings ; at this 
point, one member of the committee, without giving the least 
indication of his intention, now drew Fig. 10 outside the room as 
usual. The grotesque reproduction by Mr. Smith is decidedly 
striking; and so also is the reproduction of the next figure, 
when Mr. Smith again apparently imagined that a geometrical 
figure had been drawn. 

In some of the less accurate reproductions Mr. Blackburn 
complained of the difficulty he had in keeping the original 
drawing steadily in his mental view ; and on one or two occa- 
sions we asked Mr. Blackburn to draw his recollection of the 
picture simultaneously with Mr. Smith (the two, of course, 
being kept out of sight of each other). We found that the main 
errors in Mr. Smith's reproduction existed already in Mr. 
Blackburn's recollection of the drawing. A striking illustration 
of this is given in Fig. 16, where the reproduction closely resem- 
bles Mr. Blackburn's drawing of what he remembered. It is, in 
fact, by no means easy to to keep vividly and correctly in mind 
for several minutes any irregular figure which has only been 
actually before the eye for a few seconds. We tried one experi- 
ment to test the effect of refreshing Mr. Blackburn's memory. 
Fig. 13 was drawn by us ; and its reproduction, Fig. i3 a , was 
made by Smith in the usual way. The reproduction is very 
imperfect, being a sinuous, instead of a spiral line. No contact 
between the operators having so far occurred, we now asked 
Mr. Blackburn to touch Smith's hand for a few moments ; on 
releasing it, the reproduction, 13 15 , was obtained. Mr. Black- 
burn was now asked to stand (as at first) behind Mr. Smith, 
who remained blindfolded. The original drawing was now 
brought into the room, and held in front of Mr. Blackburn's 
eyes, and, therefore, some distance from the back of Smith's 
head. The latter now made the reproduction, 13°, which is an 
exact copy of the original. We need hardly add that there 
were absolutely no means (such as mirrors, etc.) by which 
Smith, even if not blindfolded, could have gained any glimpse of 
the drawing, and, as we have already remarked, the most 
complete silence was preserved throughout these experiments. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 97 

We have now to consider whether it was possible that any 
information of the character of the designs drawn could have 
reached Smith through the ordinary avenues of sense. Of the 
five recognized gateways of knowledge, four — tasting, smelling, 
touch, and sight — were excluded by the conditions of the experi- 
ment. There remains the sense of hearing, which was but 
partially interfered with by the bandage over the eyes and ears. 
But the information can certainly not have been conveyed by 
speech ; our ears were as near to Mr, Blackburn as Mr. Smith's, 
and our eyes would have caught the slightest movement of his 
lips. 

There remains the hypothesis of a code f consisting of 
audible signals other than oral speech ; and it would, no doubt, 
be an exaggeration to affirm that the possibility of such signals 
was absolutely excluded. We shall endeavor so to vary the 
conditions of subsequent experiments as to exclude this 
hypothesis completely: at present we will only point out the 
very great improbabilities which it involves, quite independently 
of our reliance on the integrity of Mr, Blackburn and Mr. 
Smith, which nothing has occurred to shake in the slightest 
degree. 

Let our readers who may be familiar with the Morse or any 
other code of signals try in some such way to convey a description 
of some of our drawings to a friend who is blindfolded and has 
not seen the original ; we venture to assert that, even if audible 
signs were allowed, several minutes at least would be required 
to convey the notion of the figures correctly. It is probably no 
exaggeration to say that several scores, if not hundreds, of 
precise signs would be required to convey an idea as exact as 
that implied in many of Mr. Smith's representations. But in 
our experiments what sort of range existed for this mode of 
communication ! The material for possible signs appears to be 
reduced to shuffling on the carpet, coughing, and modes of 
breathing. Anything distinctly unusual in any of these direc- 
tions must inevitably have been noticed ; and since our attention, 
during this part of the experiment, was of course concentrated 
on the relation between Mr. Blackburn and Mr. Smith we are at 



98 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

a loss to conceive how any signalling, sufficient in amount to 
convey the required ideas, could have passed undetected. 
Furthermore, it must be observed that the reproductions were not 
made in a tentative, hesitating manner as if waiting for signals ; 
but deliberately and continuously, as if copying a drawing that is 
seen. Moreover, in almost every instance the proportions of the 
different parts of the original figure were reproduced more accu- 
rately than were its more easily describable details. However 
with the view of removing all doubts that might arise as to possi- 
ble auditory communications, we on one occasion stopped Mr. 
Smith's ears with putty, then tied a bandage round his eyes and 
ears, then fastened a bolster-case over the head, and over all 
threw a blanket which enveloped his entire head and trunk. 
Fig. 22 was now drawn by one of us, and shown outside the 
room to Mr. Blackburn, who on his return sat behind Mr. Smith, 
and in no contact with him whatever, and as perfectly still as it 
is possible for a human being to sit who is not concentrating 
his attention on keeping motionless to the exclusion of every 
other object. In a few minutes Mr. Smith took up the pencil 
and gave the successive reproductions shown below. 

To profit by a code in this case, Mr. Smith would have had to 
extract the putty from his ears unobserved by us (an action the 
possibility of which the heavy swathings rendered just conceiv- 
able) and then, still smothered in bolster-case and blanket, to 
detect periodic variations in Mr. Blackburn's breathing imper- 
ceptible to us ; to identify them as proceeding from Mr. Black- 
burn, and to interpret them into a description of the figure given 
below. This hypothesis seems to us an extreme one, but, as 
we have already said, we intend to meet it by yet further varying 
and narrowing the conditions of future experiments. 

We have now to describe some experiments which were under- 
taken to test whether the mental inversion of the object that had 
been noticed in some of the early trials was accidental or other- 
wise. Mr. Smith, having been carefully blindfolded, sat with his 
back to us, in a darkened room — some heavy opaque curtains 
being between him and us. An arrow having been drawn on a 
sheet of white paper, it was held by one of us in sight of Mr. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



99 



Blackburn, who remained in our presence, and sat facing the 
same way as Mr. Smith. In answer to the query, "How is the 
arrow pointing ? " spoken by one of the Committee in a uniform 
tone of voice, Mr. Smith called out the direction as he mentally 
perceived it. We turned the arrow noiselessly, and at random, , 
in different directions, and noted the following series of 
replies : — 



Tru 

i 

2 

3 
4 

5 
6 

7 
8 

9 

10 

ii 

12 

i3 
1 4 , 

16 

i7 
18 

J 9 

20, 
21 
22 
23 

24 

25 
26 

27 

28 



Position of Arrow. Position as Stated by Smith. 

Pointing up Pointing up. 

" to left - " to right. 

" down " down. 

" to right " to right. 

" up " up. 

" to left "to right. 

" up " up. 

" up " up. 

" up " up. 

u down " down. 

" to left " down. 

" to left " down. 

" up " up. 

" to right " to left. 

" to right " to right. 

up " up. 

u up " up. 

up " up. 

" to left " to right. 

" to right " to left. 

" down " down. 

" to right . . - "to right. 

" to left " to left. 

u to left "to right. 

up " up. 

" down " down. 

" up " up. 

" up " up. 



100 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

True Position of Arrow. Position as Stated by Smith. 

29. P'nting to left P'nting to left. 

30. " to right " to left. 

31. " up " up. 

32. " to right ....... " down. 

S3. " to right " to left. 

34. " down " down. 

35- " U P " U P- 

36. " to right " to right. 

37. " down " down. 

38. " to left " down. 

39. " up "to right. 

40. " down "to right. 

41. " to right "to right. 

■42. " up " up. 

After the 37th trial Mr. Blackburn was obliged to leave ; but 
we continued the experiments, one or two of the committee tak- 
ing Mr. Blackburn's place, and with fair success. Counting 
these last, we made in all 42 trials. In these the arrow was held 
in a perpendicular position, up or down, 23 times ; and of these 
cases 20 were guessed rightly, 3 wrongly. It was held in a hori- 
zontal position, right or left, 19 times; and of these cases 7 
guessed rightly, 12 wrongly. The three wrong guesses when the 
arrow was in a perpendicular position occurred after Mr. Black- 
burn had left us ; and in these cases the error was not one of 
inversion. Of the 12 wrong guesses, when the arrow was held 
horizontally, 8 were lateral inversions of the position of the 
arrow, as if it were seen in a mirror. Hence we see that 87 per 
cent of the answers were correct for the perpendicular position, 
and barely 37 per cent for the horizontal position ; and, further, 
that it was about an even chance, when the arrow was hori- 
zontal, whether the image was described as laterally inverted 
or not. 1 

1 Mr. Smith described the impression he obtained as that of a white arrow 
on a dark ground. We used at first an arrow drawn in ink on white paper. 
Without informing Mr. Smith (who remained behind the opaque curtain) of 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. IOI 

[A number of pages of tabulated matter, and some deductions 
as to the possibilities of chance, are here omitted.] 

It will, we think, be evident to any candid inquirer, who has 
carefully followed our investigations so far, that our experiments 
derive much strength and coherence from their very multitude 
and variety. In a question where the antecedent improbability 
of our conclusions seems so great, we could not be surprised if 
any single experiment — even an experiment in which sources 
of error were so completely excluded as in the cases where the 
Creery family correctly told cards, etc., unseen by anyone except 
the investigating committee — should leave the reader's mind 
still unconvinced. But we venture to assert that the cumulative 
character of the evidence which we have now amassed, and the 
extent to which we have eliminated the hypothesis of collusion, 
chance coincidence, and muscle or sign-reading, render our claim 
to have established the reality of this novel class of phenomena 
a very strong one. We continue carefully to consider all adverse 
criticism ; but we venture to think that much of it really depends 
on an a priori presumption of impossibility which, natural though 
it may be, cannot, of course, be legitimately opposed to positive 
evidence. 

The accompanying diagrams are facsimiles of the original 
drawings, which were obtained in the manner described. The 
accuracy of the engraving has been ensured by photographing 
the original drawings. 

our intention, we cut an arrow out of white paper and placed it on a crimson 
cloth; Mr. Smith at once perceived the difference, and said he saw a kind of 
greenish arrow — this being (though we could hardly perceive it) the subject- 
ive color given to the arrow from its contiguity with the crimson cloth. We 
had no facilities at the moment for trying further experiments in this direc- 
tion, and merely mention this result, which might have been accidental, as 
indicating another avenue of inquiry. 



102 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. i. — Original Drawing. 




No. i. — Reproduction. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



103 



No. 2. — Original Drawing. 




Na 2. — Reproduction. 




104 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 3. — Original Drawing. 




No. 3. — Reproduction. 




The figures indicate the order in which the drawings were made. At the 
close Mr. Smith said 1 should be "put on here somewhere," pointing to 
the spot where the asterisk is shown. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



105 



No. 4. — Original Drawing. 




Xo. 4. — Reproduction, 




Xo. 5. — Original Drawing. Xo. 5. — Reproduction. 




io6 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 6. — Original Drawing. 




After a brief period Mr. S. declared he could see nothing; his hands were 
then held by Mr. Blackburn for a few seconds, whereupon he declared that he 
saw " something like a sickle with the point resting on the ground." Fig. 6 
(Reproduction) was then drawn. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



107 



No. 7. — Original Drawing. 




No. 7. — Reproduction. 





Mr. Smith said : " I can see a three-cornered thing, and there 's a thing like 
a duck's egg somewhere." He mentioned afterwards that he had an impres- 
sion of a cross right over the egg, and Mr. Blackburn said that he had found 
the cross against his will growing continually too large in his mental picture, 
and had once given up willing in the hope of reducing it. 



io8 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 8. — Original Drawing, 



No. 8. — Reproduction. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. ICK) 

No. 9. — Original Drawing. 




Xo. 9. — Reproduction. 




HO MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. io. — Original Drawing. 




No. io. -—Reproduction. 



Mr. Smith had no idea that the original was not a geometrical drawing. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



Ill 



No. ii. — Original Drawing. 




No. ii, — Reproduction. 




Mr. Smith had no idea that the original was not a geometrical diagram. He 
added line b some time after he had drawn line a, " seeing a line parallel 
to another somewhere." 



112 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 12. — Original Drawing. 




No. 12. — Reproduction. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



113 



No. 13. — Original Drawing. 



No. lyi. — Reproduction. 





No. 13& — Reproduction. 



No. ly. — Reprod. ction. 




No. 13^ was made after Mr. Blackburn had momentarily held Mr. Smith's hand ; 
No. iy after Mr. Blackburn had refreshed his memory by again looking at the 
original. 



U4 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 14. — Original Drawing. No. ^. — Reproduction. 





No. 14. — Reproduction. No. ^. — Reproduction. 





MIND-READING AND BEYOND. II5 

No. 15. — Original Drawing. 




No. 15. — Reproduction. 




u6 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 
No. 16. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Blackburn had not precisely remembered the figure, and drew the fol- 
lowing as representing what he had in his mind. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. VVf 

No. 17. — Original Drawing. 



©„© 



No. 17. — Reproduction. 




Inner circle begun at point marked -f-, and then carried round in one con- 
tinuous line from left to right. 



u8 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 
No. 1 8. — Original Drawing. 




No. 18. — Reproduction, i. 



No. 18. — Reproduction. 2. 




Mr. Blackburn forgot the eyes. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 
N 0# 19. — Original Drawing. 



119 




No. 19. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Blackburn was fixing his mind on the oval, in order 
to make Mr. Smith connect the lines he had got. 



120 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 20. — Original Drawing. 




No. 20. — Reproduction. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 121 



Xo. 21. — Original Drawing. 




No. 21. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Blackburn was imagining the handles as turned outwards. 



122 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 22. — Original Drawing. 



No. 22. — Reproduction. 





No. 22. — Reproduction. 



No. 22. — Reproduction. 





MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 23 



V. 

At the meeting of the Society held Nov. 22, 1883, Mr. 
Guthrie submitted a report which is specially interesting, as 
showing how he was led to investigate the subject, as well as 
additional results obtained. He says : — 

After Mr. Irving Bishop's visit to Liverpool in the spring of 
this year, it became a favorite amusement to imitate his skill in 
pin-finding; and some persons also made experiments in read- 
ing numbers thought of bv others, thev themselves meanwhile 
being blindfolded. Out of experiments made in this casual way 
arose the systematic study which it is my business to recount in 
the present paper. A party of young ladies amusing themselves 
after business hours found that certain of their number, when 
blindfolded, were able to name very correctly figures selected 
from an almanac suspended on the wall of the room, when their 
companions, having hold of their hands, fixed their attention 
upon some particular day of the month. There, so far as the 
young ladies were concerned, the matter ended. They had their 
few evenings' amusement, and other occupations and interests 
supervened. 

It so happened that about this time I read an article by Mr. 
F. Corder in the February number of " Cassell's Magazine/' 
which was written with such an air of truthfulness, and spoke of 
thought-transference as a matter of such very ordinary expe- 
rience, that for the first time I began to think that there must be 
some foundation in fact for the belief so confidently expressed. 
Up to that time I had been thoroughly skeptical, nor had I read 
any literature on the subject. I thereupon determined to try 
the experiments, as described in Mr. Corder's paper, upon my 
son, a nervous and susceptible fair-haired boy of ten years of 
age. Much to my astonishment and his own, he named quickly 
and without difficulty objects which I placed behind him when 



124 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

blindfolded under the usual conditions. He, however, would 
not perform more than two or three experiments at a time, 
saying that it made him " feel queer." Moreover, after the first 
experiments, when I asked others to witness the curious phe- 
nomenon, he seemed disposed to ensure success by taking a sly 
peep at the object, which indeed made me suspicious of the 
whole thing. Under these circumstances of the boy's reluctance, 
and the difficulty of imposing stringent conditions, I abandoned 
him as an unsuitable subject for study, more particularly as 
other satisfactory means shortly afterwards came under my 
notice. I, however, at a subsequent period, tested my son's 
powers under proper scientific conditions with the assistance of 
Mr. Birchall ; and we were both satisfied as to his possession of 
the faculty, although we did not consider him a useful subject 
for study. 

It was after the discovery of my son's powers of receiving 
impressions that I heard of the casual experiments before re- 
ferred to ; and having tested the accuracy of the reports which 
I had received, I mentioned the matter to the Council of the 
Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, asking for 
assistance for the purpose of a scientific study of the phenom- 
ena. Mr. James Birchall, the honorary secretary, to whom the 
subject was quite new, having, I suppose, some confidence in 
my good judgment, agreed to give me the advantage of his 
assistance, and we thereupon held our first meeting. From the 
very beginning it was arranged between us that Mr. Birchall 
should make a full and complete record of every experiment, 
and I have to tender him my grateful thanks for the exactitude 
and care with which this record has been kept. He has per- 
formed his office as a man free from any prepossessions, and 
simply as a matter of official duty. His suggestions have all 
been in the direction of stringency of conditions, and I may 
state that he very shortly became convinced of the bona fides of 
the experiments, and interested in the scientific prosecution of 
the study. I very much regret that he is not able to be present 
at this meeting, as we had arranged, in order personally to 
present the valuable and interesting register of the experiments 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 125 

which he has prepared. I hope, however, that he will be able 
to attend some future meeting with a report upon experiments 
which we are continuing week by week. 

And now as to the party of young ladies to whom I referred 
as having discovered the possession of the power of thought- 
transference. You must know that I am a partner in one of the 
large drapery establishments in the city of Liverpool, and that 
the young ladies are connected with one of the show-rooms of 
that establishment. A relative of mine (entered in Mr. Birch- 
all's report as Miss C), also in the business, had been present 
at the careless, off-hand experiments made in imitation of Irving 
Bishop, and, recognizing their genuine character, informed me 
of the circumstance, being aware of the experiments I had made 
with my son. 

One of the most important considerations connected with my 
study has been that I have been made cognizant, through this 
relative, of the very beginnings of the" affair. I have, as it were, 
been behind the scenes from the first, and, through my repre- 
sentative, have been informed of almost every experiment which 
has been made outside our weekly meetings, — although after 
the first month the young ladies agreed only to practise at these 
meetings, as I (rightly or wrongly) thought it desirable on con- 
siderations of health to limit their work in this direction. Thus I 
have had the advantage of studying a series of experiments ab ovo. 
I had not to enter upon an examination of the achievements of 
people who had been working together for years ; but have been 
acquainted with the origin and whole development of the mani- 
festations, and have witnessed the genuine surprise which the 
operators and the subjects have alike exhibited at their increas- 
ing successes, and at the results of our excursions into novel 
lines of experiment. The affair has not been the discovery of 
the possession of special powers, first made and then worked up 
by the parties themselves for gain or glory. The experimenters 
in this case were disposed to pass the matter over altogether as 
one of no moment, and only put themselves at my disposal in 
regard to experiments in order to oblige me. The experiments 
have all been devised and conducted by myself and Mr. Birch- 



126 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

all without any previous intimation of their nature, and could 
not possibly have been foreseen. In fact they have been to the 
young ladies a succession of surprises. No set of experiments 
of a similar nature has ever been more completely known from 
its origin, or more completely under the control of the scientific 
observer. 

As to the young ladies concerned, I have known them all for 
many years, and am able to speak in the highest terms of their 
probity and intelligence. I know also that they have a high 
regard for me, and would not willingly lead me into any error. 

The two subjects, Miss R. and Miss E., are about twenty 
years of age, engaged in business all day from 9 A.M. to 
6 P.M., in the same show-room, and they discovered their apti- 
tude with their companions in the same room as operators or 
agents. They do not meet elsewhere, as all the assistants 
live with their friends, and do not board on the establishment. 

The lady, Miss R d, who is supposed to have the principal 

influence in conveying impressions, is the head of the room, and 
occupies a position of great trust and responsibility. 

The experiments were commenced with simple shapes, such 
as diamonds, circles, triangles, etc., cut out of brightly- colored 
ribbons, and exhibited upon a black background ; also with 
cards and letters of the alphabet printed in a bold type. After- 
wards objects were introduced, and short words were formed of 
the letters. The first series of experiments were of a visual 
kind, and were very successful. They were conducted in the 
presence of Mr. Birchall, myself, several lady companions of the 
subjects, and usually one or two members of the Literary and 
Philosophical Society. In the earlier experiments the subject 
was in contact (that is to say clasped or touched hands) with 

Miss R d or some other lady friend. I need not say that 

the subject was always effectually blindfolded, and that the 
object was placed in such a position that it could not be seen 
by her, even if she were not so incapacitated for observation. 
These conditions apply to all the experiments, and, to save itera- 
tion, I state them once for all. 

After a short time, experiments of this description were per- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 127 

formed without any contact whatever. This was a suggestion 
of my relative, and, under her superintendence, the first set of 
experiments with Miss R., under these new conditions, was com- 
pletely successful, and will be found recorded in Mr. BirchalPs 
report. At the next meeting after this discovery, the experi- 
ments were tried without contact, and were almost uniformly 
successful. The party sat in a semicircle before Miss R. or 
Miss E., the object being placed behind her, and, the attention 
of all being concentrated upon it, the object was very speedily 
described and sometimes named. It is noteworthy that the idea 
or name of the object did not come first to the percipient, but 
the appearance seemed to dawn gradually upon the mind, and 
sometimes it only presented itself in its general features, so that 
very often it could only be described and not named. First the 
color impression was received, then the general shape, and after- 
wards any special characteristic, and finally, the name. This 
was the usual order of the process. As an illustration, take the 
case of a blue feather. The subject said, " It is pale. It 
looks like a leaf; but it can't be a leaf — looks like a feather 
curled. Is it a feather ? " Again, a key w r as described as " A 
little tiny thing with a ring at one end and a little flag at the 
other, like a toy flag." Urged to name it, she said, " It is very 
like a key." 

The foregoing is a summary of our work during the first few 
weeks. All our regular meetings were successful, but in our 
desire to exhibit our discovery to our fellow members, we had 
some extra meetings, which proved total failures, much to our 
chagrin, and much to the disappointment of our subjects. It 
would appear that any mental disturbance on the part of the 
operators or on the part of the subjects, due to anxiety to 
succeed, or to the novelty of the entourage of persons or things, 
very much interferes with the success of experiments. I may 
here remark that the result of our experience is that success or 
failure depends as much (if not more) upon the condition of the 
agent as upon that of the percipient. It has happened that, 
after a complete failure before strangers, the agent and percipi- 
ent have been almost immediately able to obtain a successful 



I2 8 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

transference of a number of impressions — the previous failure 
having been probably due to the mind of the agent occupying 
itself with the presence of the visitor, instead of being directed 
exclusively upon the object to be described. As regards the 
condition of the agent, I may say that although I have been 
very successful myself in giving impressions to each of the sub- 
jects, without the presence of any other person, still, under 
precisely similar conditions, when I have not felt equal to the 
required effort of concentration, I have been unable to repeat 
the success. We have also found that wandering attention on 
the part of the agents is misleading ; and it would, I think, be 
fair to explain in this way one or two failures of the following 
type — that although a certain article was placed for observation, 
a picture hanging on the wall a little above it was described. On 
account of the disturbance of the agent's mind, as well as that 
of the subject, it is judged that experiments in a drawing- 
room, before a large miscellaneous company, are not likely to be 
successful. 

At the conclusion of the first series of experiments some new 
departures were made. 

First we tried the experiment of producing an article in the 
absence of the subject from the room, and after concealing it 
readmitting her, and after blindfolding and isolating her asking 
her to describe the object we had been looking at. This experi- 
ment was tried both before and after the summer interregnum, 
and was successful. Thus a lady's purse, in form of a satchel, 
with a bright metallic frame and steel bar handle above, was thus 
described : " Is it something not quite square ? Something bright 
in the middle. Is it a purse ? There is something very bright at 
the top. Has it anything else over it ? Don't know what this is 
— whether it belongs to the purse. I Ve lost it — is it a bag ? " 
On another occasion a key was correctly named, and Mr. John* 
son's gold watch-chain, hanging in a curve from his watch-pocket 
to a button-hole of his waistcoat, elicited the answer : " Is it a 
chain, a watch-chain, hanging from a pocket like this ? " the per- 
cipient then describing in the air a curve similar to that formed 
by the chain we had been looking at, but which was now 



MIXD-READIXG AND BEYOND. 1 29 

concealed. Then she added, " There is a little pendant at the 
end of it." 

Proceeding a step further we agreed, in the absence of the 
subject from the room, to imagine some object, and, under 
similar conditions, to ask her to describe it This experiment 
was also successfully performed, on several occasions, by both 
subjects. A gold cross, pine-apple, and other objects imagined 
in this way have been correctly named. 

We tried also the perception of motion, and found that the 
movements of objects exhibited could be discerned. The idea 
was suggested by an experiment tried with a card which, in order 
that all present should see, I moved about, and was informed by 
the percipient, Miss R., that it was a card, but she could not tell 
which one, because it seemed to be moving about. On a subse- 
quent occasion, in order to test this perception of motion, I 
bought a toy monkey, which worked up and down on a stick 
by means of a string drawing the arms and legs together. The 
answer was : " I see red and yellow, and it is darker at one end 
than the other. It is like a flag moving about — it is moving. 
. . . Now it is opening and shutting like a pair of scissors." 

We have also tried experiments in the transference of real or 
imaginary pains, which Miss R. is able to receive from Mr. 
Birchall. This branch of our studies has not as yet been carried 
very far, for want of time, although I think it more likely to 
throw light upon the nature of the mode of transmission than 
any other branch of the inquiry. In particular, it would be 
desirable to ascertain, by observation or even .experiment, if the 
part affected in the subject shows signs of physical change, such 
as contraction, tension, rush of blood, redness, or any other 
physical change similar to that produced upon the person of the 
agent in causing the pain. 

At the conclusion of our spring session, we tried (without 
contact) the transference of names, short quotations, &c. , all the 
company thinking of the word or words. In this we met with 
but little success, but on one occasion, the proverb. " Time flies," 
having been thought of by the company, elicited the answer, " Is 
it two words ? — is it ' Time flies ' ? " 



I3O MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

On this occasion, seeing that the subject was so apt, I 
proposed to the company that we should think of a historical 
scene, and two experiments were made, which are published in 
Mr. Birchall's report. They were imperfect, viewed critically, 
each of them having been done at the second instead of at the first 
attempt ; but if the fact of thought-transference is accepted as 
proved on other grounds, they are suggestive of further experi- 
ments in the same direction. 

We discontinued our experiments at the end of May, on 
account of press of business and arrangements for holidays; and 
I am told by the subjects that no experiments whatever were 
made until we resumed our meetings, towards the end of August, 
in preparation for a visit by Mr. Myers and Mr. Gurney. As I 
expected, after the interregnum we met with very little success, 
and I wrote to those gentlemen not to expect much under the 
circumstances. And, indeed, the " subjects " were able to do 
very little, and our visitors would have gone away disappointed, 
had not our inquiries taken the direction of experiments in trans- 
ference of tastes. 

I may add the results of a few casual experiments, made in 
the course of the last week in London, which illustrate the 
partial transference of somewhat more complex visual impressions 
than most of those above described. 

One evening I called Miss E. and a friend of mine, Mr. Lee, 
out of the room, and requested them to assist me in imagining 
the large stained glass rose-window in the transept of Westmin- 
ster Abbey, opposite to which Miss E., Miss R., and I had been 
sitting at the service the same afternoon. I then asked Miss 
R. to say what object we were thinking of. After a while she 
said, " I cannot tell what you are looking at, but I seem to be 
sitting in Westminster Abbey, where we were this afternoon." 
After another interval, she said, " I seem to be looking at a 
window," and again, " I think it is the window in the chancel 
with the figures." When afterwards told which window it was, 
she said that she did not see any window distinctly, and cer- 
tainly not the rose-window thought of. 

I next proposed another object, and decided upon something 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 131 

which had struck our attention in a lamp shop in New Bond 
Street, a lighted lamp with a stuffed monkey clinging to it — the 
lamp at the same time revolving, and the monkey moving a 
cocoanut, which was suspended from its foot. This experiment 
took a very long time, and was only partially successful. Firs.t 
Miss R. said she thought of a cat, or it might be a dog. After 
a while she said it was something long, dark, and hanging — 
describing the size and shape pretty well with her hands. Then 
she said that she saw something hanging straight down, and 
moving up and down. After the removal of the blindfolding, 
she looked at the gas chandelier, and said, " Was it not that? " 
and then immediately, " No, it was not that — it was a lamp, and 
it was lighted." Asked if the cat she saw had anything to do 
with the lamp, she said, " No." 

The following completely successful results in the simpler 
forms of thought-transference were also obtained on the same 
occasion as the above. 

I proposed to Miss R. to tell a. name thought of by myself, 
Mr. Lee, and Miss E., without contact and blindfolded. The 
name " Polly " was written on a card and passed round in strict 
silence. In a few minutes Miss R. said, " I can only think of 
Polly." 

The name " Isabella " was then selected by me, and passed 
round silently. After a longer interval, Miss R. said, " I don't 
know what it can be. Somehow I can only think of my own 
name." Asked what was her name, she said, " Isabel." 

Mr. Lee proposed thinking of a number, and as only single 
numbers had previously been thought of, it occurred to me to 
take a double one — 34 — which I wrote down and passed round. 
Miss R. shortly said, "Are there two figures ? " I said " Yes." 
" One is 4 and the other 3." She did not know whether it was 
34 or 43. 

Our endeavors recently have been towards the ascertainment 
of individual powers on the part of the agents in regard to each 
of the two subjects. The test selected has been the produc- 
tion, by the blindfolded subjects, of copies of drawings placed 
behind them. An improved method has been to place the draw- 



I32 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

ing on a stand, with a wooden back between the agent and the 
subject, and the agent, placing himself on the opposite side 
of a small table, either joins hands with the subject, or, by 
preference, does not touch her at all, and gazes at the drawing 
until the subject says she has an impression thereof. The 
drawing is then taken down and concealed, the blindfolding is 
removed, and the subject, being already provided with draw- 
ing materials, proceeds to delineate the impression she has 
received. In most of these cases no one besides the agent and 
the subject has been present in the room, and the result is 
held to establish the relative power of each agent in giving off an 
impression of this kind. In this way it has been found that all 
the agents have been successful in giving information individu- 
ally to each of the subjects, although the range of experi- 
ments is not yet complete, because some new operators we have 
introduced have not yet had time to develop or settle down 
properly to their work. However, it has been found that both 
Miss R. and Miss E. have been able to receive impressions of 

drawings singly from myself, Mr. Birchall, Miss R d, Mr. 

Steel, President of the Literary and Philosophical Society of 
Liverpool, and imperfectly from two or three other gentlemen. 
Since my arrival in London, a very successful producer of im- 
pressions has been discovered in the person of one of your 
members, Mr. F. S. Hughes. Mr. Gurney was also successful 
at one of our meetings. 

The originals of the following diagrams were for the most part 
drawn in another room from that in which the subject was 
placed. The few executed in the same room were drawn while 
the subject was blindfolded, at a distance from her, and in 
such a way that the process would have been wholly invisible to 
her or any one else, even had an attempt been made to observe 
it. During the process of transference, the agent looked steadily 
and in perfect silence at the original drawing, which was placed 
upon an intervening wooden stand ; the subject sitting oppo- 
site to him, and behind the stand, blindfolded and quite still. 
The agent ceased looking at the drawing, and the blindfold- 
ing was removed, only when the subject professed herself ready 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I33 

to make the reproduction, which happened usually in times 
varying from half a minute to two or three minutes. Her posi- 
tion rendered it absolutely impossible that she should glimpse at 
the original. She could not have done so, in fact, without rising 
from her seat and advancing her head several feet ; and as she 
was almost in the same line of sight as the drawing, and so 
almost in the centre of the agent's field of observation, the 
slightest approach to such a movement must have been instantly 
detected. The reproductions were made in perfect silence, and 
without the agent even following the actual process with his 
eyes, though he was of course able to keep the subject under 
the closest observation. 

In the case of all the diagrams, except those numbered 7 and 
8, the agent and the subject were the only two persons in 
the room during the experiment. In the case of numbers 7 and 
8, the agent and subject were sitting quite apart in a corner 
of the room, while Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. were talking in 
another part of it. Numbers 1-6 are specially interesting as 
being the complete and consecutive series of a single sitting. 



134' MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

No. i. — Original Drawing. No. i. — Reproduction, 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. No contact. 



No. 2. — Original Drawing. No. 2. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. No contact. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I35 

No. 3. — Original Drawing. No. 3. — Reproduction. 





Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. 
No contact. 



No. 4. — Original Drawing. 



No. 4. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. 
No contact. 




I36 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

No. 5. — Original Drawing. No. 5. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E. 
No contact, 




No. 6. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Guthrie and Miss E„ No contact. 
No. 6. — Reproduction. 




Miss E. almost directly said, " Are you thinking of the bottom of the sea, 
with shells and fishes ; " and then, " Is it a snail or a fish ? " — then drew as 
above. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



137 



No. 7. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Gurney and Miss R. Contact for half a minute before the reproduction 

was drawn. 



No. 7. — Reproduction. 




138 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 8. — Original Drawing. No. 8. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Gurney and Miss R. No contact. 



No. 9. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Birchall and Miss R. No contact. 



No. 9. — Reproduction. 




Miss R. said she seemed to see a lot of rings, as if they were moving, and 
she could not get them steadily before her eyes. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 139 

Xo. 10. — Original Drawing. No. 10. — Reproduction. 





Mr. Birchall and Miss R. No contact 



No. n. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Birchall and Miss E. No contact. 



I40 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

No. 12. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Steel and Miss R. No contact. 



No. 12. — Reproduction. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I4I 

No. 13. — Original Drawing. No. 13. — Reproduction. 




Mr. Steel and Miss E. Contact before 
the reproduction was made. 



No. 14. — Original Drawing. No. 14. — Reproduction. 





Mr. Hughes and Miss E. Contact Miss E. said, " A box or chair badly 
before the reproduction was made. shaped/' — then drew as above. 



142 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



No. 15. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Hughes and Miss E. No contact. 



No. 15. — Reproduction. 




Miss E. said, " It is like a mask at a pantomime," and immediately drew as 

above. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I43 



No. 16. — Original Drawing. 




Mr. Hughes and Miss E. No contact. 
No. 16. — Reproduction. 




144 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



VI. 

At the meeting of the Society held Nov. 22, 1883, a fourth 
report was submitted by tne Committee on Thought-Trans- 
ference as follows : 

Since the last report was presented to the Society, the Com- 
mittee on Thought-Transference have been steadily pursuing 
their inquiries, and have not only obtained a considerable 
amount of additional evidence confirmatory of their previous 
work, but also evidence of a new and important character. 
Moreover, we are happy to find that the inquiry is beginning to 
be pursued by independent groups of investigators throughout 
the country : some of these have communicated with us, and 
have courteously permitted us to examine their mode of experi- 
ment, and gladly availed themselves of the precautions upon 
which experience has taught us to insist. To Mr. Malcolm 
Guthrie, J. P., of Liverpool, we owe our warm thanks for his 
most capable and courteous co-operation, and we are glad to say 
that he has lately joined our Committee. Since his extensive 
series of experiments Mr. Guthrie has enlarged his range of ex- 
periments, and obtained remarkable success in the transference of 
visual impressions — diagrams and the like — of tastes, and of 
pains. The only sort of distinct sensation of which the transfer- 
ence yet remains to be obtained, is that of smell, — there being, 
of course, special difficulties in so arranging the experiment that a 
subject shall have no opportunity of detecting by direct means 
any strongly odorous substance which the agent is smelling 
close by. In many of Mr. Guthrie's later experiments the sole 
agent has been himself, or one or other of the gentlemen 
engaged with him in the investigation. 

We trust that Mr. Guthrie's example will stimulate others 
among our members to conduct experiments of the same kind. 
Not all investigators, indeed, may have similar advantages of 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I45 

wide command of subjects for experiment; but anyone among 
us may very possibly find in his own family circle some one 
subject of value ; and it is, of course, in the family circle that 
it is easiest to secure that continual and patient repetition of 
experiments which seems essential to any marked success. 

1 . Ti'ansference of Tastes. 

The experiments which we shall first detail have reference to 
the transference of tastes. This particular form of transferred 
sensation has been often experimented upon, by ourselves and 
by others, with subjects in the hypnotic state ; but, so far as 
we know, Mr. Guthrie was the first person to procure the phe- 
nomenon when agent and percipient were both of them in a 
normal condition. There was no chance of collusion, conscious 
or unconscious ; for the taste to be discerned was known to no 
one except the actual experimenters ; and the sensations expe- 
rienced were verbally described by the subjects (not written 
down), so that all danger of involuntary muscular guidance was 
eliminated. 

The following series of experiments were made in Liverpool 
during the first week in September, 1883 : — 

A selection of about twenty strongly-tasting substances was 
made. These substances were enclosed in small bottles and 
small parcels, precisely similar to one another, and kept care- 
fully out of the range of vision of the subjects, who were, 
moreover, blindfolded, so that no grimaces made by the tasters 
could be seen. The subjects, in fact, had no means whatever 
of knowing, through the sense of sight, what was the substance 
tasted. 

Smell had to be guarded against with still greater care. When 
the substance was odoriferous, the packet or bottle was opened 
outside the room, or at such a distance, and so cautiously, as to 
prevent any sensible smell from escaping. The experiments, 
moreover, were conducted in the close vicinity of a very large 
kitchen, whence a strong odor of beefsteak and onions pro- 
ceeded during almost all the time occupied. The tasters took 
pains to keep their heads high above the subjects, and to 



I46 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

avoid breathing with open mouth. One substance (coffeej tried 
was found to give off a slight smell, in spite of all precautions, 
and an experiment made with this has been omitted. 

The tasters were Mr. Guthrie (M.G.), Mr. Gurney (E.G.), and 
Mr. Myers (M.). The percipients were two young ladies em- 
ployed in Mr. Guthrie's establishment, whom we will call R. and 
E. The tasters lightly placed a hand on one of the shoulders or 
hands of the percipients. During the first experiments (Septem- 
ber 3d and 4th) there were one or two other persons in the 
room, who, however, were equally ignorant as to the substance 
tasted. During the experiments silence was preserved. During 
the last fifteen experiments (September 5th) only M. G., E. G., 
and M., with the two percipients, w r ere present. On this evening 
Miss E. was, unfortunately, suffering from sore throat, which 
seemed to blunt her susceptibility. On this occasion none of 
the substances were allowed even to enter the room where the 
percipients were. They were kept in a dark lobby outside, and 
taken by the investigators at random, so that often one investi- 
gator did not even know what the other took. Still less could 
any spy have discerned what was chosen, had such spy been 
there, which he certainly was not. 

A very small portion of each substance used was found to be 
enough. The difficulty lies in keeping the mean between the 
massive impression of a large quantity of a salt, spice, bitter, or 
acid, which confounds the specific differences under each general 
head, and the fading impression which is apt to give merely a 
residual pungency, from which the characteristic flavor has 
escaped. It is necessary to allow some minutes to elapse 
between each experiment, as the imaginary taste seems to be 
fully as persistent as the real one. 

September 3, 1883. 

Expt. Taster. Percipient. Substance. Answers Given. 

1 . . . M E. . . Vinegar "A sharp and nasty taste." 

2 . . . M E. . . Mustard " Mustard." 

3 . . . M R. . . Do " Ammonia."' 

4 . . . M E. . . Sugar "I still taste the hot taste of the 

the mustard." 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 47 

September 4. 

Expt. Taster. Percipient. Substance. Answers Given. 

5 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Worcestershire sauce, ''Worcestershire sauce."' 

6 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do. "Vinegar." 

7 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Port wine " Between eau de Cologne and, 

beer." 

8 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do " Raspberry vinegar."' 

9 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Bitter aloes " Horrible and bitter." 

10 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Alum "A taste of ink — of iron — 

of vinegar. I feel it on my 
lips — it is as if I had been 
eating alum/' 

11 . . . M. G. ... E. . . Alum (E. perceived that M. G. was 

not tasting bitter aloes, as 
E. G. and M. supposed, but 
something different. No 
distinct perception on ac- 
count of the persistence of 
the bitter taste.) 

12 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Nutmeg "Peppermint — no — what you 

put in puddings — nut- 
meg." 

13 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do " Nutmeg." 1 

14 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Sugar Nothing perceived. 

15 . . . M. G. ... R. . . Do Nothing perceived. 

(Sugar should be tried at an 
earlier stage in the series, 
as, after the aloes, we 
could scarcely taste it our- 
selves. ) 
16... E. G. & M. E. . . Cayenne pepper . . . "Mustard." 

17 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do. . . . "Cayenne pepper." 

(After the cayenne we were 
unable to taste anything 
further that evening.) 

September 5. 

18 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Carbonate of soda . . Nothing perceived. 

1 In some cases two experiments were carried on simultaneously with the same 
substance; and when this was done, the first percipient was of course not told 
whether her answer was right or wrong. But it will perhaps be maintained that, when 
her answer was right, her agent unconsciously gave her an intimation of the fact by 
the pressure of his hand ; and that she then coughed or made some audible signal 
to her companion, who followed suit. Whatever the theory may be worth, it will, 
we think, be seen that the success of the second percipient with the nutmeg was the 
only occasion, throughout the series, to which it can be applied. 



I48 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

September 5 (continued). 

Expt. Taster. Percipient. Substance. Answers Given. 

19 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Caraway seeds .... "It feels like meal — like a seed 

loaf — caraway seeds." 
(The substance of the seeds 
seemed to be perceived be- 
fore their taste.) 

20 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Cloves " Cloves.*' 

21 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Citric acid Nothing felt. 

22 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do " Salt." 

23 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Liquorice " Cloves." 

24 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Cloves " Cinnamon." 

25 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Acid jujube " Pear drop." 

26 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do "Something hard, which is giv- 

ing way ; acid jujube." 

27 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Candied ginger .... "Something sweet and hot." 

28 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do " Almond toffy." 

(M. G. took this ginger in the 
dark, and was some time 
before he realized that it 
was ginger.) 

29 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Home-made Noyau. . "Salt." 

30 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do. . . " Port wine." 

(This was by far the most 
strongly smelling of the 
substances tried ; the scent 
of kernels being hard to 
conceal. Yet it was named 
by E. as salt.) 

31 . . . E. G. & M. E. . . Bitter aloes " Bitter." 

32 . . . M. G. . . . R. . . Do Nothing felt. 



We should have preferred in these experiments to use only 
substances which were wholly inodorous. But in order to get 
any description of tastes from the percipients it was necessary 
that the tastes should be either very decided or very familiar. 
It would be desirable, before entering on a series of experiments 
of this kind, to educate the palates of the percipients by accus- 
toming them to a variety of chemical substances, and also by 
training them to distinguish, with shut eyes, between the more 
ordinary flavors. It is well known how much taste is helped by 
sight and determined by expectation ; and when it is considered 
that the percipients in these cases were judging blindfold of the 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 49 

mere shadow of a savor, it will, perhaps, be thought that even 
some of their mistakes are not much wider of the mark than 
they might have been had a trace of the substance been actually 
placed upon their tongues. 

The interest and novelty of the foregoing experiments consist . 
in the fact, already mentioned, that the subjects were appa- 
rently in their normal waking state. It has long been on record 
that such transference of impressions may take place between 
a mesmeriser or hynoptist and a sensitive subject. But here 
no preliminary mesmeric passes nor fixation of the eyes had 
been resorted to ; nor indeed have the subjects ever been 
mesmerized. 

2 . Transference of Pains. 

The same subjects, Miss R. and Miss E., who proved sensi- 
tive to the transference of tastes, were also found sensitive to 
the transference of pains whilst in their normal waking state. 
Mr. Guthrie has made a number of experiments in this direction. 

3. Casual Experiments. 

We have received from correspondents in different parts of 
the country, records of more or less successful trials made 
among members of their own families. As a rule, however, 
these experiments have been too few and too fitful to be cf 
much value : at the same time they are of interest as affording 
information that the faculty of thought-transference is probably 
tolerably widely diffused. Here, for example, is the result of a 
casual trial by one of our members, the Hon. Mrs. Fox Powys 
as percipient, with her husband as agent. 

" I send the results of a trial my husband and I had alone. 
To me it seemed like ma^ic ! We had tried, I think, three 
times before this, with indifferent success. I was the guesser, 
and he held my left hand with his right, and merely thought of 
a number. I sat with my eyes closed. The rapidity with which 
the thing was done astonished us : the number seemed to flash 
instantaneously into my brain. In fact, so simultaneous was it 



150 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

that I began to think that I, perhaps, had impressed the number 
upon Colonel Powys' brain first. However, when we reversed 
the operation, and my husband guessed, he was not at all suc- 
cessful. Here are our experiments; the complete series, includ- 
ing failures as well as successes, is given. 

" First we tried single figures, and only one guess was 
allowed. 

Number Thought Of. Result. 

3 I perceived nothing. 

2 I answered 2. 

4 " 7- 

6 I perceived nothing. 

5 I answered 5. 

9 " 9- 

3 " 3. 

8 " 8. 

" Here, out of 8 trials, 5 were right. We now tried numbers 
of two figures, and where a second guess was given it is 
noted. 

Number Thought Of. Result. 

58 24 

36 36 

27 72 On a second guess, 27. 

69 28 " " 82. 

100 100 

42 42 

55 55 

22 79 " " 97. 

38 38 

30 42 " " 78. 

22 120 " " 20. 

" Here 5 were right the first time, and one the second time, 
out of 11 trials. We tried again the next evening, but, out of 
20, only got 5 right on the first trial, and 2 right on a second 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 151 

trial. The secret of success the previous evening I believe to 
lie in the fact that I felt almost absolute confidence in my power 
to guess correctly, and to this height of confidence I have never 
since been able to attain." 

The coincidences here recorded seem clearly beyond the 
power of pure chance to account for. 

Another correspondent, writing from Brunswick Place, Leeds, 
sent to us an account of some successful experiments of his 
own, which, however, seemed probably due to mere muscular 
interpretation. We explained this to him, pointing out the pre- 
cautions necessary to guard against the error. In reply, he 
writes to us as follows : — 

" I have made a number of experiments since writing to you 
last ; perhaps the best of these was my finding a pin secreted in 
a purse which was in my sister's pocket. I also found the num- 
ber of a bank note correctly, and correctly discovered 10 figures 
out of 12. But these experiments were made when contact was 
permitted, or by my running the agent's hand over a series of 
figures from o to 9. When I tried yesterday to tell the figures 
without contact, I failed completely. 

" I then blindfolded my sister, aged thirteen, and placed a 
piece of pencil and paper before her. Then I drew, with a 
piece of chalk on a school-slate, a simple diagram (a circle with 
a cross inside), without her hearing the scratching of the chalk. 
To my surprise she drew the enclosed, in about a minute, there 
being no contact between us, and I giving no indication what- 
ever, merely thinking and staring at the slate. I then made 
other experiments in a similar way, and enclose you the results." 

These, and a few other diagrams subsequently received, -made 
in all ten trials, with diagrams of various random and irregular 
shapes. Of the ten trials six were as good reproductions of the 
original as could have been drawn had the child seen the origi- 
nal drawing and attempted to draw it blindfolded. The remain- 
ing four bore less, but still some, resemblance to the original. 
The honorary secretary of the committee has visited this corre- 
spondent in Leeds, and seen the way in which the experiments 



152 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

were made. As far as could be judged from such a visit, no 
information could have reached the percipient through the ordi- 
nary channels of sense. The agent is a highly intelligent young 
man, and quite alive to the precautions necessary to be taken to 
avoid obvious errors of experiment. 

The following diagrams are part of the series referred to. 
Professor Barrett has seen the agent, Mr. J. W. Smith, of 
Brunswick Place, Leeds, and his sister, the percipient, and has 
carefully explained to them the necessary precautions ; but their 
description of the mode in which they had worked before this 
interview convinced him that those previous trials had been 
conducted with due care, and that the results were genuine. 
The experiments have been made throughout without contact. 
The first four of the diagrams here engraved were made before 
Professor Barrett's visit ; the last four have been made since his 
visit 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I53 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 




154 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 

O (3 
§> 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I55 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 





156 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 




MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 157 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 




I58 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



Original Drawing. 



Reproduction. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 159 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 




1 6a 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



Original Drawing. 




Reproduction. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. l6l 

The closing portion of the fourth report on Thought-Trans- 
ference follows : — 

The following is an extract from a letter written to one of us 
by Mr. R. Gibson, of Limerick. He has since supplied us with 
additional details, and tells us that the subject (who has a 
large apothecary's business), and several of the agents, had 
previously been quite incredulous as to the phenomenon. 

March 20, 1884. — On last Tuesday week we were trying 
some experiments at a friend's house, and a Mr. Day, who was 
there, told the number thought of in five different cases by five 
different people, — told them one after the other without a bungle 
or any hesitation whatever. After these five consecutive trials 
he got a violent headache, and on trying again could not tell 
any more. He was successful by picturing to himself (with his 
eyes shut) a blackboard, and the number seemed at once to 
stand out on it in white. 

The headache is an interesting, but (we are happy to say) not 
a frequent feature of these experiments. The imagining of the 
blackboard is a device worth noting. 

The following account was received, some weeks ago, from 
Miss Crabbe (Gordon College, Chatham Street, Liverpool), a 
lady known to two members of the committee : — 

One evening, at a rectory where I have been staying, we were 
trying pin-finding, when I said I had seen much more wonderful 
things than that done, and told them of w T hat is done in your 
Society, such as placing figures and other objects behind people, 
etc. 

They were very sceptical about it, — said it could not be done 
without trickery, collusion, etc. ; that it was nonsense, etc. ; and 
we had quite a lively argument about it, for I stuck to my point, 
and vowed it could be and was done. At last the rector said 
he would try it, for that if any one could do it he could. He 
acted as agent, and his daughter as percipient. The latter was 
blindfolded and placed in the usual position ; the background 
was a large piece of white cardboard, and on that I pinned a 
pink oblong card, and, to my astonishment, in about a minute 
or two's time Miss described it : for I must confess I 



1 62 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

expected a failure on account of the scepticism of all par- 
ties. 

Of course this success slightly changed their opinion, and 
they tried again. The next object I placed up was a round fan 
or hand-screen, which was most accurately described ; the order 
we proceeded in was first, color; second, shape ; and third, object. 
Object tifter object was tried, and every time was a success. 
They declared it was wonderful. Night after night we tried it, 

and the whole time I was there Miss never once made the 

slightest error, and often named the object after the lapse of a 
second or so, with no second guess. 

We tried everything we could think of, including spoons, 

door-keys, oranges. In describing the latter, Miss said : 

" It is something with a reddish tinge, not quite round, but a 
little flat at the top and bottom. Oh, I see ; it is an orange." 

After the objects, we tried taste-transference. The effect was 

marvellous. Salt, sugar, nutmeg, etc., were tasted by Mr. 

and transferred to his daughter. 

Next we tried the number-reading, which was also a grand 
success ; in this case we sometimes reversed the agent and per- 
cipient, Mr. acting as the latter (and not as the former, as 

on the previous occasions), and either Miss or I as the 

agent. Whichever plan we took proved successful, and w r e tried 
very many times. The percipient wrote the numbers down 
while the agent was in contact with either the left hand or the 
forehead. 

After the number-writing, we tried objects again, without 
contact. This was also done without an error, Mr. — ■ — acting 
as agent, and making a few downward passes while fixing his 
mind on the object to be described. 

Next we tried reading sentences written on the background ; 
i. e., I wrote in large hand on a card, " Don't kill dogs ; " 
then, "Thou shalt not kill," both of which were read by Miss 

, with the exception of one word, where I stopped her on 

account of an interruption. Then Mr.— — acted as percipient 

and Miss as agent, and I wrote up, " Be quick." Mr. 

said, "B-e— be, q-u-i-e-t — quiet." "No," we said, " not quite 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 163 

right." " No," he said, " the last two letters are c-k, not e-t ; it 

is ' Be quick.' " Miss , however, never even made that 

much of a failure. 

Of all the experiments I have seen performed, I never saw any 
to equal these, which were all so quickly and accurately made. , 
I can tell you I felt elated at having turned sceptics into 
such clever performers. 

In a second letter Miss Crabbe adds : — 

When I proposed trying taste-transference, I said to Mr. : 

" It must be something that has no smell," whereupon he re- 
plied, " Well, write down the name of anything you wish me to 
taste on a piece of paper." I did so, writing the word " ginger." 
He then put the paper in his mouth, and I suppose imagined 

he tasted the ginger, for in a minute or two Miss said what 

it was. The reason I did not mention this before is that I am 

not sure whether Miss actually tasted the ginger, or whether 

the word was impressed on her mind, and she felt bound to say 
it. This was the first experiment in taste-transference ; after- 
wards I always gave the substance to Mr. to taste himself 

first, and then his daughter evidently did really perceive the 
taste. 

In the sentence-reading I wrote upjirst, " Don't kill dogs," but 
some one entered the room before this was read at all, and an 
interruption ensued, whereupon I said, " Never mind that one 
now, don't tell us anything about it, and I will write another." 
I then wrote, "Thou shalt not kill." This was read correctly, 

and immediately afterwards Miss said, " I may as well tell 

you what I thought the first sentence was. Was it — Don't 
kill ? " and then she made some remark about the last word 
being a short one, or something of the kind, but I really don't 
remember what the remark w r as. 

4. Unconscious Muscular Action, 

The subject of thought-reading is just now in a rather singu- 
lar position ; for it is obtaining immense vogue throughout the 
country by dint of public exhibitions which, however clever 
and interesting, have no claim to be considered thought-read- 



I64 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

ing at all. These exhibitions usually produce a perfect deluge 
of letters in the local journals, in which the " willing game " and 
its results are discussed from every possible standpoint and in 
every possible key, by believers, disbelievers, and doubters. In 
the more scientific contributions to this correspondence, expres- 
sion is usually given to three distinct views, each of which 
deserves serious attention. 

Some contributors are certain to give an adequate explanation 
of the process of " muscle-reading " — an explanation which 
easily covers the successes of the public performers, as well as 
ninety-nine out of one hundred cases of success in the "willing 
game." 

Some one else is pretty sure to put forward the hypothesis 
strongly suggested by the one hundredth case of the " willing 
game" — where what is done is of so subtle or complicated a 
kind as to raise doubts whether unconscious muscular pressure, 
or rather release of pressure, in a certain direction, is adequate to 
account for it ; and one is tempted to look deeper for the springs 
of action, and to conceive the governance of one organism by 
another through some sort of nervous induction. 

And finally, some prudent correspondent will point out that — 
as long as the form of experiments adopted is the performance 
of some action — the problem can never be solved as long as 
contact of any sort is allowed between the " wilier " and the 
" willed " ; and will perhaps do us the honor to refer to some of 
our own experiments, in which success in far more delicate 
operations than pin-finding and number-w T riting has been attained 
without contact. 

It is clearly only to experiments performed under this last 
condition — a condition which precludes any unconscious guid- 
ance from the agent — that the word "thought-reading" can 
be safely applied. That name, of course, in no way implies the 
absence of a physical basis for the phenomena ; the theory of 
brain-waves (which would be only an instance of " nervous 
induction") has been suggested to supply such a basis. But of 
such a physical basis we know nothing; of the psychical facts we 
know a great deal, all of them being, in various forms, transfer- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I65 

ences of impression or idea from mind to mind otherwise than 
by the recognized sensory channels. The difference between these 
cases and the public exhibitions of muscular and tactile sensi- 
bility is of course fundamental ; and it is unfortunate that 
the word " thought-reading " should have become associated, 
with the latter. Even for the genuine cases " thought-trans- 
ference" is a much better expression; the other term having 
apparently conveyed to some persons the notion that, if once 
the reality of the phenomena w-ere established, we should all be 
able to read each other's secrets. 

We must emphatically repeat, then, what we laid down in our 
first report, — that wherever contact is permitted, success in the 
performance of a desired action must be attributed to indica- 
tions given by the " wilier " — that his unconscious and involun- 
tary variations in pressure are unconsciously and involuntarily, or 
consciously and voluntarily, interpreted by the percipient. 1 We 
have thought it desirable to make a series of experiments to 
ascertain what can be done in this way ; and the results have 
been most striking, but not unexpected. One of our members 
has given a lecture on muscle-reading in the Ulster Hall, Bel- 
fast, where he performed the following muscular feat, as de- 
scribed by a local newspaper. " A ^"5 note was handed to 
Mr. W. Gray, who fixed the number of it in his mind, the 
lecturer being blindfolded. The blackboard was brought into 
requisition, having five sections or colors marked upon it. Mr. 
Sugden, whose right hand, holding a piece of chalk, was in 
contact with Mr. Gray's left, then made the figures 5, 5, 3, 4, o 
with great deliberation, and these were acknowledged as the 
correct number of the bank-note." Further experiments have 
been made by the honorary secretary of the committee with an- 
other subject. Numbers thought of have been written with per- 

1 The same objection naturally applies to all cases where the subject writes 
down something which is in the agent's mind — the action, due to unconscious 
guidance, being then the movements of the pencil or chalk. The objection 
does not apply to cases where the subject gives his notion of the "trans- 
ferred impression " — word, number, taste, or whatever it may be — by word 
of mouth. 



166 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

feet accuracy by the subject, when the tips of the agent's fingers 
were allowed to rest on the hand that held the pencil, provided 
that the agent himself followed the movements of the pencil with 
his eye. When the agent's eyes were averted, and there was 
no more chance of unconscious guidance, failure was at once 
the result. Diagrams have been accurately reproduced in like 
manner, while failure has inevitably followed the closing or 
blindfolding of the agent's eyes. With a lady as agent, two 
drawings were even reproduced with a considerable degree of 
accuracy when her fingers lightly touched the subject's left 
hand, he holding the pencil in his right. 

We may conclude with a practical suggestion. Public perform- 
ances, such as those which are exciting so much interest through- 
out the country, have this advantage — that they invariably set 
people to work in private houses : and it would clearly be a great 
thing if this result could be made useful as well as amusing. 
We would venture, then, to suggest to those who feel drawn to 
the pursuit, that, instead of repeating the old " willing game," 
and merely re-proving what has been proved a hundred times 
before, they should devote themselves to experiments without 
contact, or else adopt some form of experiment where the 
subject has only to name an object or sensation — and so 
aid in the establishment of facts completely new to science. 
Cards, numbers, names, diagrams, all supply good forms of 
experiment. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 167 



VII. 

At the meeting of the Society, held March 28, 1884, Professor 
Oliver J. Lodge, Professor of Physics in University College, 
Liverpool, presented a paper entitled, " Some Experiments in 
Thought-Transference," as follows: — 

Members of the Society for Psychical Research are all perfectly 
aware of the experiments in thought-transference which have 
been originated and carried out by Mr, Malcolm Guthrie, in 
Liverpool. 

Perhaps it may not be considered impertinent, since it bears 
on the question of responsibility and genuineness, if I state that 
Mr. Guthrie holds an important position in Liverpool, being a 
Justice of the Peace, and an active member of the governing 
bodies of several public institutions, among others of the new 
University College ; that he is a severe student of philosophy, 
and the author of several works bearing on the particular doc- 
trines of Mr. Herbert Spencer. I may also say that he is a 
relative of Professor Frederick Guthrie, and that he has exhib- 
ited in this experimental research such care and systematic 
vigilance as might perhaps have beep expected on Mr. Francis 
Galton's principles, and such as would, if properly directed, have 
placed him in a high rank of experimental philosophers. I may 
also remind you of what he himself has here said, viz., that he 
is a partner in the chief drapery establishment in Liverpool, and 
that it is among the employees of that large business that 
the two percipients hereafter referred to were accidentally 
discovered. 

Let it be understood that the experiments are Mr. Guthrie's, 
and that my connection with them is simply this, — that after 
Mr. Guthrie had laboriously carried out a long series of experi- 
ments and had published many of his results, he set about 
endeavoring to convince such students of science as he could lay 



l68 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

his hands upon in Liverpool ; and with this object he appealed 
to me, among others, to come and witness, and within limits 
modify, the experiments in such a way as would satisfy me of 
their genuineness and perfect good faith. 

Yielding to his entreaty, I consented, and have been, I sup- 
pose, at some dozen sittings ; at first simply looking on so as to 
grasp the phenomena, but afterwards taking charge of the ex- 
periments — Mr. Guthrie himself often not being present, though 
he was always within call in another room, ready to give advice 
and assistance when desired. 

In this way I had every opportunity of examining and vary- 
ing the minute conditions of the phenomena so as to satisfy 
myself of their genuine and objective character, in the same 
way as one is accustomed to satisfy one's self as to the truth and 
genuineness of any ordinary physical fact. 

I did not feel at liberty to modify the experiments very 
largely, — in other words to try essentially new ones, — because 
that would have been interfering with Mr. Guthrie's prerogative. 
I only regarded it as my business to satisfy myself as to the 
genuineness and authenticity of the phenomena already de- 
scribed by Mr. Guthrie. If I had merely witnessed facts as a 
passive spectator I should most certainly not publicly report 
upon them. So long as one is bound to accept imposed condi- 
tions and merely witness what goes on, I have no confidence in 
my own penetration, and am perfectly sure that a conjurer could 
impose on me, possibly even to the extent of making me think 
that he was not imposing on me ; but when one has the control 
of the circumstances, can change them at will, and arrange one's 
own experiments, one gradually acquires a belief in the 
phenomena observed quite comparable to that induced by the 
repetition of ordinary physical experiments. 

It is only on these grounds that I have been asked to report 
progress to-night, and it is only on these grounds that I have 
consented. 

After this long preamble you may be disappointed to hear 
that I have no striking or new phenomenon to report, but only 
a few more experiments in the simplest and most elementary 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 169 

form of what is called Thought-transference ; though certainly 
what I have to describe falls under the head of " thought- 
transference " proper, and is not explicable by the merely 
mechanical transfer of impressions, exhibited before large 
audiences, signalized by sensational articles in the daily press, 
and more properly described as muscle-reading. 

In using the term " thought-transference " I would ask to be 
understood as doing so for convenience, because the observed 
facts can conveniently be grouped under such a title ; but I 
would not be understood as implying that I hold any theory on 
the subject. It is a most dangerous thing to attempt to convey 
a theory by a phrase, and, probably, if I held any theory on the 
subject, I should be more guarded in my language, and should 
require many words to set it fotth. As it is, the phrase de- 
scribes correctly enough what appears to take place, viz., that 
one person may, under favorable conditions, receive a faint 
impression of a thing which is strongly present in the mind, or 
thought, or sight, or sensorium of another person not in contact, 
and may be able to describe or draw it more or less correctly. But 
how the transfer takes place, or whether there is any transfer at 
all, or what is the physical reality underlying the terms " mind," 
"consciousness," "impression," and the like, and whether this 
thing we call "mind" is located in the person, or in the space 
round him, or in both, or neither; whether indeed the term 
" location," as applied to mind, is utter nonsense and simply 
meaningless, — concerning all these' things I am absolutely 
blank, and have no hypothesis whatsoever. I may, however, be 
permitted to suggest a rough and crude analogy. That the 
brain is the organ of consciousness is patent, but that conscious- 
ness is located in the brain is what no psychologist ought to 
assert; for just as the energy of an electric charge, though 
apparently on the conductor, is not on the conductor, but in all 
the space round it : just as the energy of an electric current, 
though apparently in the copper wire, is certainly not all in the 
copper wire and possibly not any of it ; so it may be that the 
sensory consciousness of a person, though apparently located in 
his brain, may be conceived of as also existing like a faint echo in 



I^O MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

space, or in other brains, though these are ordinarily too busy 
and pre-occupied to notice it. 

The experiments which I have witnessed proceed in this sort 
of way. One person is told to keep in a perfectly passive con- 
dition, with a mind as vacant as possible ; and to assist this 
condition the organs of sense are unexcited, the eyes being ban- 
daged and silence maintained. It might be as well to shut out 
even the ordinary street hum by plugging the ears, but as a 
matter of fact this was not done. 

A person thus kept passive is the " percipient." In the ex- 
periments I witnessed, the percipient was a young lady, one or 
other of two who had been accidentally found to possess the 
necessary power. Whether it is a common power or not I do 
not know. So far as I am aware very few persons have been 
tried. I myself tried, but failed abjectly. It was easy enough 
to picture things to one's self, but they did not appear to be 
impressed on me from without, nor did any of them bear the 
least resemblance to the object in the agent's mind. [For 
instance, I said a pair of scissors instead of the five of diamonds, 
and things like that.] Nevertheless, the person acting as per- 
cipient is in a perfectly ordinary condition, and can in no sense 
be said to be in a hypnotic state, unless this term be extended 
to include the emptiness of mind produced by blindfolding and 
silence. To all appearance a person in a brown study is far 
more hypnotized than the percipients I saw, who usually unban- 
daged their own eyes and chatted between successive experi- 
ments. 

Another person sitting near the percipient, sometimes at first 
holding her hands, but usually and ordinarily without any con- 
tact at all, but with a distinct intervening distance, was told to 
think hard of a particular object, either a name, or a scene, or a 
thing, or of an object or drawing set up in a good light and in 
a convenient position for staring at. This person is the " agent," 
and has, on the whole, the hardest time of it. It is a most tiring 
and tiresome thing to stare at a letter, or a triangle, or a donkey, 
or a teaspoon, and to think of nothing else for the space of two or 
three minutes. Whether the term " thinking " can properly be 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. IJl 

applied to such barbarous concentration of mind as this I am 
not sure ; but I can answer for it that if difficulty is an important 
element in the definition of "thinking," then it is difficult 
enough in all conscience. 

Very frequently more than one agent is employed, and when 
two or three people are in the room they are all told to think of- 
the object more or less strenuously ; the idea being that wandering 
thoughts in the neighborhood certainly cannot help, and may 
possibly hinder, the clear transfer of impression. As regards 
the question whether, when several agents are thinking, only one 
is doing the work, or whether all really produce some effect, I 
have made a special experiment, which leads me to conclude 
that more than one agent can be active at the same time. We 
conjecture that several agents are probably more powerful than 
one, but that a confusedness of impression may sometimes be 
produced by different agents attending to different parts or 
aspects of the object : this, however, is mere conjecture. 

Most people seem able to act as agents, though some appear 
to do better than others. I can hardly say whether I am much 
good at it or not. I have not often tried alone, and in the 
majority of cases when I have tried I have failed ; on the other 
hand, I have once or twice apparently succeeded. We have 
many times succeeded with agents quite disconnected from the 
percipients in ordinary life, and sometimes complete strangers to 
them. Mr. Birchall, the head master of the Birkdale Industrial 
School, frequently acted ; and the house physician at the Eye 
and Ear Hospital, Dr. Shears, had a successful experiment, 
acting alone, on his first and only visit. All suspicion of a pre- 
arranged code is thus rendered impossible, even to outsiders 
who are unable to witness the obvious fairness of all the experi- 
ments. 

The object looked at by the agent is placed usually on a small, 
black, opaque, wooden screen between the percipient and agents, 
but sometimes it is put on a larger screen behind the percipient 
The objects were kept in an adjoining room, and were selected 
and brought in by me, with all due precaution, after the per- 
cipient was blindfolded. I should say, however, that no reliance 



172 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

was placed on, or care taken in, the bandaging. It was merely 
done because the percipient preferred it to merely shutting the 
eyes. After recent experiments on blindfolding by members of 
the Society, I certainly would not rely on any form of bandaging ; 
the opacity of the wooden screen on which the object was placed 
was the thing really depended on, and it was noticed that no 
mirrors or indistinct reflectors were present. The only surface 
at all suspicious was the polished top of the small table on which 
the opaque screen usually stood. But as the screen sloped 
backwards at a slight angle, it was impossible for the object on 
it to be thus mirrored. Moreover, sometimes I covered the 
table with paper, and very often it was not used at all, but the 
object was placed on a screen or a settee behind the percipient; 
and one very striking success was obtained with the object 
placed on a large drawing-board, loosely swathed in a black silk 
college gown, and with the percipient immediately behind the 
said drawing-board, and almost hidden by it. 

As regards collusion and trickery, every one who has wit- 
nessed the absolutely genuine and artless manner in which the 
impressions are described, has been perfectly convinced of the 
transparent honesty of purpose of all concerned. This, how- 
ever, is not evidence to persons who have not been present, and 
to them I can only say that to the best of my scientific belief no 
collusion or trickery was possible under the varied circumstances 
of the experiments. 

A very interesting question presents itself as to what is really 
transmitted, whether it is the idea or name of the object, or 
whether it is the visual impression. To examine this I frequently 
drew things without any name — perfectly irregular drawings. 
I am bound to say that these irregular and unnameable produc- 
tions have always been rather difficult, though they have at 
times been imitated fairly well ; but it is not at all strange that a 
faint impression of an unknown object should be harder to grasp 
and reproduce than a faint impression of a familiar one, — such 
as a letter, a common name, a teapot, or a pair of scissors. More- 
over, in some very interesting cases the idea or name of the 
object was certainly the thing transferred, and not the visual 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I73 

impression at all ; this specially happened with one of the two 
percipients ; and, therefore, probably in every case, the fact of 
the object having a name would assist any faint impression of 
its appearance which might be received. 

As to aspect, t. e., inversion or perversion, so far as my experi- 
ence goes, it seems perfectly accidental whether the object will 
be drawn by the percipient in its actual position, or in the 
inverted or perverted position. This is very curious, if true, 
and would certainly not have been expected by me. Horizontal 
objects are never described as vertical, nor vice versa; and 
slanting objects are usually drawn with the right amount of 
slant. 

In proceeding to the details of the actual experiments, it 
would take far too long to recount the whole — failures as well 
as successes. I shall only describe a few, from which a more 
or less obvious moral may be drawn. 

The two percipients are Miss R. and Miss E. Miss R. is the 
more prosaic, staid, and self-contained personage, and she it is 
who gets the best quasi-visual impression, but she is a bad 
drawer, and does not reproduce it very well. 

Miss E. is, I should judge, of a more sensitive temperament, 
seldom being able to preserve a strict silence, for instance, and 
she it is who more frequently jumps to the idea or name of the 
object without being able so frequently to see it. 

I was anxious to try both percipients at once, so as to com- 
pare their impressions, but I have not met with much success 
under these conditions, and usually, therefore, have had to try 
one at a time — the other being frequently absent or in another 
room, though also frequently present and acting as part or sole 
agent. 

I once tried a double agent — that is, not two agents thinking 
of the same thing, but two agents each thinking of a different 
thing. A mixed and curiously double impression was thus pro- 
duced and described by the percipient, and both the objects 
were correctly drawn. 



174 mind-reading and beyond. 

Description of Some of the Experiments. 

In order to describe the experiments briefly I will put in 
parentheses everything said by me or by the agent, and in 
quotation marks all the remarks of the percipient. The first 
seven experiments are all that were made on one evening with 
the particular percipient, and they were rapidly performed. 

A. Experiments with Miss R. as Percipie?it. 

First Agent, Mr. Birchall, holding hands. No one else present 
except myself. 

Object — a blue square of silk. — (Now, it's going to be a 
color; ready.) "Is it green ? " (No.) " It 's something be- 
tween green and blue — peacock." (What shape ?) She drew 
a rhombus. 

[N. B. — It is not intended to imply that this was a success by 
any means, and it is to be understood that it was only to make 
a start on the first experiment that so much help was given as is 
involved in saying " it 's a color." When they are simply told 
"it's an object, 1 ' or, what is much the same, when nothing is 
said at all, the field for guessing is practically infinite. When 
no remark at starting is recorded none was made, except such 
an one as " Now we are ready," by myself.] 

Next object — a key on a black ground. — (It 's an object.) In a 
few seconds she said, " It 's bright — it looks like a key." Told 
to draw it she drew it just inverted. 

Next object — three gold studs in morocco case. — " Is it yellow ? 
Something gold — something round — a locket or a watch, 
perhaps." (Do you see more than one round ?) " Yes, there 
seem to be more than one. Are there three rounds? — three 
rings." (What do they seem to be set in ?) " Something bright 
like beads." [Evidently not understanding or attending to the 
question.] Told to unblindfold herself and draw, she drew the 
three rounds in a row quite correctly, and then sketched round 
them absently the outline of the case ; which seemed, therefore, 
to have been apparent to her, though she had not consciously 
attended to it. It was an interesting and striking experiment. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1/5 

Next object — a pair of scissors standing partly open with their 
points down, — "Is it a bright object? — ■ Something long ways 
[indicating verticality] — a pair of scissors standing up — a little 
bit open. " Time, about a minute altogether. She then drew 
her impression, and it was correct in every particular. The ob- 
ject in this experiment was on a settee behind her, but its posi- 
tion had to be pointed out to her when, after the experiment, she 
wanted to see it. 

Next object — a drawing of a right-angled triangle on its side. — 
(It 's a drawing.) She drew an isosceles triangle on its side. 

Next — a circle with a chord across it. — She drew two de- 
tached ovals, one with a cutting line across it. 

Next — a drawing of a Union Jack pattern. — As usual in 
drawing experiments, Miss R. remained silent for perhaps a 



S3 



Original. Reproduction. 

minute ; then she said, " Now I am ready." I hid the object ; 
she took off the handkerchief, and proceeded to draw on paper 
placed ready in front of her. She this time drew all the lines 
of the figure except the horizontal middle one. She was ob- 
viously much tempted to draw this, and, indeed, began it two 
or three times faintly, but ultimately said, " No, I'm not sure," 
and stopped. 

I will now describe an experiment indicating that one agent 
may be better than another. 

Object — the three of hearts. — Miss E. and Mr. Birchall both 
present as agents, but Mr. Birchall holding percipient's hands at 
first. " Is it a black cross — a white ground with a black cross 
on it?" Mr. Birchall now let Miss E. hold hands instead of 
himself, and Miss R. very soon said, " Is it a card ? " (Right.) 
" Are there three spots on it ? Don't know what they are. I 
don't think I can get the color. They are one above the other, 
but they seem three round spots. I think they 're red, but am 
not clear." 



1/6 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Next object — a playing card with a blue anchor painted on it 
slantwise instead of pips. — No contact at all this time, but 
another lady, Miss R d, who had entered the room, as- 
sisted Mr. B. and Miss E. as agents. " Is it an anchor — a 
little on the slant." (Do you see any color?) " Color is 
black. It 's a nicely drawn anchor." When asked to draw, 
she sketched part of it, but had evidently half forgotten it, and, 
not knowing the use of the cross arm, she could only indicate 
that there was something more there, but she couldn't remem- 
ber what. Her drawing had the right slant exactly. 

Another object — two pair of coarse lines crossing; drawn in red 
chalk, and set up at some distance from agents. No contact. 
"I only see lines crossing." She saw no color. She afterwards 
drew them quite correctly, but very small. 

Double object. — It was now that I arranged the double object 

between Miss R d and Miss E., who happened to be sitting 

nearly facing one another. The drawing was a square on one 
side of the paper, a cross on the other. Miss R d looked at 



□ x 



Original. Reproduction. 

the side with the square on it. Miss E. looked at the side with 
the cross. Neither knew what the other was looking at — nor did 
the percipient know that anything unusual was being tried. Mr. 
Birchall was silently asked to take off his attention, and he got up 
and looked out of window before the drawings were brought in, 
and during the experiment. There was no contact. Very soon 
Miss R. said, "I see things moving about — I seem to see two 
things — I see first one up there and then one down there — I 
don't know which to draw — I can't see either distinctly." (Well, 
anyhow, draw what you have seen.) She took off the bandage 
and drew first a square, and then said, " Then there was the other 
thing as well — afterwards they seemed to go into one," and she 
drew a cross inside the square, from corner to corner, adding 
afterwards, " I don't know what made me put it inside." 

The next is a case of a perfect stranger acting as agent by 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1/7 

himself at the first trial. Dr. Shears, house physician at the 
Eye and Ear Infirmary, came down to see the phenomena, and 
Miss R. having arrived before the others, Mr. Guthrie proposed 
his trying as agent alone. Dr. Shears, therefore, held Miss 
R.'s hand while I set up in front of him a card : nothing what- 
ever being said as to the nature of the object. 

Object — the Jive of clubs, at first on a white ground. " Is it 
something bright?" (No answer, but I changed the object to a 
black ground where it was more conspicuous.) " A lot of black 
with a white square on it." (Go on.) " Is it a card ? " (Yes.) 
•'Are there five spots on it?" (Yes.) "Black ones." (Right.) 
" I can't see the suit, but I think it 's spades." 

Another object at same sitting, but with several agents, no contact, 
a drawing of this form — 





Original. Reproduction. 

"I can see something, but I am sure I can't draw it, — it's 
something with points all round it, — it's a star, — or like 
a triangle within a triangle." Asked to draw it, she expressed 
reluctance, said it was too difficult, and drew part of a star 
figure, evidently a crude reproduction of the original, but incom- 
plete. She then began afresh by drawing a triangle, but was 
unable to proceed. 

I then showed her the object for a few seconds. She ex- 
claimed, " Oh yes, that's what I saw. — I understand it now." 
I said, " Well, now draw it." She made a more complete 
attempt, but it was no more really like the original than the first 
had been. 

M 



T 



lAl 



z 



i 7 8 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 



Experiments at a Sitting in the room of Dr. Herdman, Professor 
of Zoology at University College. 

Object — a drawing of the outline of a flag. — Miss R. as per- 



Original. 



Reproduction. 



cipient in contact with Miss E. as agent. Very quickly Miss R. 
said, " It 's a little flag," and when asked to draw, she drew it 
fairly well, but perverted. I showed her the flag (as usual after 
a success), and then took it away to the drawing-place to fetch 
something else. I made another drawing, but, instead of bring- 
ing it, I brought the flag back again and set it up in the same 
place as before, but inverted. There was no contact this time. 

Miss R d and Miss E. were acting as agents. 

Object — same flag inverted. — After some time, Miss R. said, 
" No, I can't see anything this time. I still see .that flag — The 
flag keeps bothering me — I shan't do it this time." Presently 
I said, " Well, draw what you saw, anyway." She said, " I only 
saw the same flag, but perhaps it had a cross on it." So she 
drew a flag in the same position as before, but added a cross to 
it. Questioned as to aspect, she said, " Yes, it was just the 
same as before." 



Object — an oval gold locket, hanging by a bit of string, itnth a 
little price label attached. — Placed like the former object on a 
large drawing-board, swathed in a college gown. The percipient, 
Miss R., close behind the said board and almost hidden by it. 

Agents, Miss R- d and Miss E., sitting in front ; no contact ; 

nothing said. " I see something gold - — something hanging 
— like a gold locket." (What shape ?) " It 's oval," indicat- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 79 

ing with her fingers correctly. (Very good so far, tell us some- 
thing more) — meaning ticket at top. No more said. When 
shown the object, she said, " Oh yes, it was just like that," but 
she had seen nothing of the little paper ticket. 

Next object — a watch and chain pinned up to the board as on a « 
waistcoat, — This experiment was a failure, and is only interest- 
ing because the w r atch-ticking sounded abnormally loud, suffi- 
cient to give any amount of hint to a person on the lookout for 
such sense indications. But it is very evident to those witnessing 
the experiments that the percipient is in a quite different attitude 
of mind to that of the clever guesser, and ordinary sense indica- 
tions seem wholly neglected. I scarcely expected, however, that 
the watch-ticking could pass unnoticed, though indeed we shuf- 
fled our feet to drown it somewhat, but so it was ; and all we 
got was "something bright, either steel or silver — Is it any- 
thing like a pair of scissors ? " (Not a bit.) 

I have now done with the selection of experiments in which 
Miss R. acted as percipient ; and I will describe some of those 
made with Miss E. As a rule, these seemed perhaps less satis- 
factory and complete at the time, but there are several points of 
considerable interest noticeable in connection with them. 

B. — Experiments with Miss E. as Percipient. 

Object — an oblong piece of red (cerise) silk. — Agent, Mr. B., in 
contact. " Red." (What sort of red ?) " A dark red." (What 
shape ?) " One patch." (Well, what shade is it ?) " Not a pale 
red." 

Next object — -a yellow oblong. — Agent as before. " A dusky 
gold color — A square of some yellow shade." 

Object — the printed letter r. — Told it was a letter; agent as 
before. " I can see R." (What sort of R ?) " An ordinary 
capital R." 

This illustrates feebly w r hat often, though not always, happens 
with Miss E., — that the idea of the object is grasped rather than 
its actual shape. 

Another object — a small printed e. — " Is it E ? " (Yes.) But, 
again, she could n't tell what sort of E it was. 



180 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

Object — a teapot cut out of silver paper, — Present — Dr. Herd- 



Original. Reproduction. 

man, Miss R d, and Miss R., Miss R. holding percipient's 

hands, but all thinking of the object. Told nothing. She 
said, " Something light — no color — looks like a duck — 
like a silver duck — something oval — head at one end and 
tail at the other. " [This is not uncommon in ducks.] The 
object, being rather large, was then moved further back, so that 
it might be more easily grasped by the agents as a whole, but 
percipient persisted that it was like a duck. On being told to 
unbandage and draw, she drew a rude and perverted copy of the 
teapot, but did n't know what it was unless it was a duck. Dr. 
Herdman then explained that he had been thinking all the time 
how like a duck the original teapot was, and, in fact, had been 
thinking more of ducks than teapots. 

Next object — a hand-mirror brought in and set up in front of 

Miss R d. — No contact at first. Told nothing. She said, 

" Is it a color?" (No.) " No, I don't see anything." Object 
then shifted for Miss R. to look at herself in it, holding per- 
cipient's hand. " No, I don't get this." Gave it up. I then 
hid the mirror in my coat, and took it out of the room. Dr. 
Herdman reports that while I was away Miss E. begged to 
know what the object had been, but the agents refused, saying 
that I had evidently wished to keep it secret. Half annoyed, 
Miss E. said, "Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I believe it was a 
looking-glass." 

Next object— a drawing of a right-angled triangle. — No con- 
tact. — " Is it like that ? " drawing a triangle with her finger. (No 
answer.) " It 's almost like a triangle." She then drew an 
isosceles triangle. 

Next object — a drawing of two parallel but curved lines. — 
No contact.- — "I only see two lines," indicating two parallel 
lines. " Now they seem to close up." 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. l8l 

Next object — a tetrahedron outline, rudely drawn in projection. 



— "Is it another triangle?" (No answer, but I silently pass 
round to the agents a scribbled message, " Think of a pyramid.") 
Miss E. then said, "I only see a triangle," — then hastily, 
" Pyramids of Egypt. No, I shan't do this." Asked to draw, 
she only drew a triangle. 

Objut — a rude outline of a donkey, or other quadi'uped. — Still 
no contact at first. — "Can't get it, I am sure." I then asked 
the agents to leave the room, and to come in and try one by one. 

First Miss R d, without contact, and then with. Next Miss 

R., in contact, when Miss E. said, hopelessly, " An old woman 
in a poke bonnet." Finally I tried as agent, alone, and Miss E. 
said, "It's like a donkey, but I can't see it, nor can I draw it." 

C. — Experi7?ie?its with both Percipients at once. 

In addition to the experiments with single percipients, I tried 
a few with both percipients sitting together, hoping to learn 
something by comparing their different perceptions of the same 
object. 

But, unfortunately, the experiments were not very successful ; 
sometimes they each appeared to get different aspects or the 
parts of object, but never very distinct or perfect impressions. 
The necessity of imposing silence on the percipients, as well as 
on the agents, was also rather irksome, and renders the results 
less describable without the actual drawings. 

I still think that this variation might convey something inter- 
esting if pursued under favorable circumstances. Whether 
greater agent-power is necessary to affect two percipients as 
strongly as one, or whether the blankness of mind of one percipi- 
ent reacts on the other, I cannot say. 

With regard to the feelings of the percipients when receiving 
an impression, they seem to have some sort of consciousness of 
the action of other minds on them ; and once or twice, when not 
so conscious, have complained that there seemed to be "no 



1 82 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

power" or anything acting, and that they not only received no 
impression, but did not feel as if they were going to. 

I asked Miss E. what she felt when impressions were coming 
freely, and she said she felt a sort of influence or thrill. They 
both say that several objects appear to them sometimes, but 
that one among them persistently recurs, and they have a feel- 
ing, when they fix upon one, that it is the right one. 

Sometimes they seem quite certain that they are right. 
Sometimes they are very uncertain, but still right. Occa- 
sionally Miss E. has been pretty confident and yet quite 
wrong. 

One serious failure rather depresses them, and after a success 
others often follow. It is because of these rather delicate 
psychological conditions that one cannot press the variations 
of an experiment as far as one would do if dealing with inert 
and more dependable matter. Usually the presence of a 
stranger spoils the phenomena, though in some cases a stranger 
has proved a good agent straight off. 

The percipients complain of no fatigue as induced by the 
experiments, and I have no reason to suppose that any harm is 
done them. The agent, on the other hand, if very energetic, is 
liable to contract a headache ; and Mr. Guthrie himself, who 
was a powerful and determined agent for a long time, now feels 
it wiser to refrain from acting, and conducts the experiments 
with great moderation. 

If experiments are only conducted for an hour or so a week, 
no harm can, I should judge, result, and it would be very interesting 
to know what percentage of people have the perceptive faculty 
well developed. 

The experiments are easy to try, but they should be tried 
soberly and quietly, like any other experiment. A public plat- 
form is a most unsuitable place ; and nothing tried before a 
mixed or jovial audience can be of the slightest scientific value. 
Such demonstrations may be efficient in putting money into 
the pockets of showmen, or in amusing one's friends ; but all 
real evidence must be obtained in the quiet of the laboratory or 
the study. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 83 



VIII. 

Man naturally shrinks from what appears to him to be super- 
natural. 1 But if man could only understand that nothing which 
can come within his ken can by any possibility be supernatural, 
all cause for shrinking must vanish. Man is but a part of 
Nature ; beyond Nature he cannot go. Everything that occurs, 
and that he knows occurs, is of necessity a natural occurrence, 
something which occurs because of a natural law. Man may 
not know that law, but he is equipped with perceptive and rea- 
soning faculties, the former with which to determine whether 
alleged phenomena do or do not occur, and the latter with which 
to deduce from their study and investigation the conditions 
under which they occur and the laws which govern their occur- 
rence. To relegate any phenomena to the fanciful category of 
the supernatural is to say that one is too ignorant or too dishon- 
est to give them the study and investigation w T hich alone can 
account for, and alone have explained, all known phenomena. 
The savage finds it easiest to account for the tides by attributing 
them to supernatural causes, but patient and honest investiga- 
tion and comparison have shown that they result from the vary- 
ing attraction of the sun and moon, coupled with the rotation 
of the earth on its axis. To the uninstructed, the production of 
a current of electricity in a piece of wire by a current passing 
through another wire in its vicinity, but not touching it, is an 
inexplicable marvel ; but to those w r ho have informed themselves, 
while no less a marvel, it is a natural marvel, because they have 
learned that this phenomenon of induction occurs in accordance 
with fixed laws, w r hich experiment, thought, comparison, and 

1 As the reader has learned, all in this book that precedes this page is 
compiled from the published proceedings of the London Society for Psychical 
Research. What follows is wholly my own, and I alone am responsible 
for it. — W. A. H. 



1 84 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

study have reduced to exact form. Until we have exhausted 
the possibilities of Nature, and have discovered all of Nature's 
laws, — as yet we know but few of them, — let us be content to 
believe that our failure to understand a thing does not neces- 
sarily involve the inability of natural law to account for it. 

If no such thing as a magnet had ever been known or seen, 
and a man should state on his unsupported evidence that he had 
been shown a piece of iron which had the power of attracting 
towards and holding to its surface, other smaller pieces of iron, 
the probability is that the public would dismiss the subject with 
the remark that either he had been deceived by a piece of 
clever jugglery, or that he had made the story up out of the 
whole cloth. In proof of this, the public would take a piece of 
iron, show that it had no such power, and deduce from its ex- 
periment this conclusion : " Admitting, as a matter of argument, 
that the substance did attract and hold pieces of iron, it is clear 
that it was not iron, for we have tried the experiment, and iron 
will not do it." If, undaunted by this criticism, the man should 
further allege that the piece of iron which he saw do these mar- 
vellous things had the power of imparting this same power to 
other pieces of iron, by mere contact with them, the public would 
rise as one man and call him a fool, on the ground that any such 
phenomenon was clearly contrary to the laws of matter ; for- 
getting, as the public always forgets, that no man has yet 
obtained a complete and authentic copy of Nature's Revised 
Statutes, and that there may be, and doubtless are, between its 
covers, enactments with whose provisions it is not yet familiar. 
If, undaunted still, despite the charge of mental incapacity 
added to that of knavery, the man should seek out the owner of 
the marvellous piece of iron, apply a knife-blade to it, and, to 
his own satisfaction, ascertain that the knife-blade had become 
possessed of the power, he would naturally expect, on taking it to 
the public and showing them its action, to have that eminent 
body confess itself in the wrong. But if, unfortunately, when it 
came to the test, some little time having intervened, the knife- 
blade did not work, the public would deride him as a lunatic, 
and his sole excuse would be that, for some reason unknown to 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 85 

him, the power had waned. This the public would consider a 
more barefaced and ridiculous assertion than any that had gone 
before, and would indignantly ask whether he took them to be 
drivelling idiots, that he dared thus to impose upon them. 

In process of time other men would appear, claiming to 
have seen such pieces of iron, and at length some fortunate pos- 
sessor of a fragment would come to the front and offer to display 
its powers — for a consideration. To many the owner's determi- 
nation to make money out of his " find " would be a new proof 
of fraud, and in all reasonable probability they would refuse to 
investigate. But some would investigate, especially if they 
could do so unobserved. If they saw the least loophole for 
possible fraud, they would loudly decry the whole thing as sheer 
humbug ; but if, on the contrary, they saw things they could not 
explain according to their knowledge of Nature's laws, they 
would keep very still. At length, however, enough people of 
integrity and ability would pluck up courage to assert their belief 
that there was reasonable ground for supposing that there was, 
amid much delusion and deception, a certain amount of evidence 
going to show that such a power did reside in certain pheno- 
menal pieces of what appeared to be iron. Having reached this 
conclusion, they would form a " Society for the Study of Things 
called Magnets, and the Alleged Phenomena therewith Con- 
nected," and then would begin a series of careful experiments 
by instructed and capable persons, which would result in their 
conviction that there did exist in nature certain pieces of a min- 
eral substance having all the characteristics and properties of 
iron, which, in addition, had exactly those marvellous proper- 
ties described by the man who first brought the subject to the 
attention of the public, in return for which valuable information 
the public proceeded to declare its firm conviction that he was 
either a knave or a fool, or, more likely, both. But after the 
facts had been established through investigation by reputable 
and instructed persons, who were ridiculed for even considering 
them seriously — probably a long time after — the public would 
accept them, ignore its own action in the premises, and imme- 
diately proceed to double-lock the doors of its mind against any 



1 86 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

more intrusions from people impiously seeking to overthrow the 
Laws of Matter ! 

Why, it will be asked, are deception and fraud necessary 
concomitants in such cases. The reason is not far to seek or 
hard to find. When honest and capable men abstain from 
politics, because they believe politics to be corrupt and fear to 
be defiled, they help to make politics more corrupt by abandon- 
ing the management of politics to corrupt men. When the 
public puts a certain class of phenomena under the ban, and 
says to all, " touch them at your peril," it naturally follows that 
for a long time many men competent to investigate them fear to 
do so, and leave them chiefly in the hands of persons either 
uninstructed, or unscrupulous, or both. With such persons gain 
is the chief end, and what they cannot produce by fair means 
they will produce by unfair means, for their gains depend upon 
results, and results they must have. Hence it is that before 
any new truth in nature reaches the point where it receives 
honest investigation, it is largely left to the tender mercies of 
charlatans. But this does not affect or alter the original truth 
in any way, nor are the charlatans solely or even chiefly to be 
blamed. The fault rests largely with those who found it more 
convenient to ridicule and deny than to investigate and study. 
Their dishonesty is as great as that of the charlatans, and, accord- 
ing to their light, far more culpable. 

In what has been said of the attitude of the public towards 
new truths in nature, the object has been rather to state facts 
than to make criticisms. The public is naturally conservative 
and sceptical. It is better that it is so. It would be far worse 
were it prone to accept everything. But there is a middle 
course, which is better still. This is never to deny Or ridicule 
because one does not understand. The good woman who 
believed her sailor son when he said he saw the remains of 
Pharaoh's chariots in the Red Sea, but called him to account 
for lying when he said he saw flying-fish in the Pacific, is to be 
remembered. In front of the imperial palace in Berlin stand 
two bronze horses, each held by the bridle by a figure on foot. 
A German wit has said that they typify the government of 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 187 

Bismarck — one showing "Progress Restrained/' the other, 
" Conservatism Assisted." It may safely be said that when any 
new truth, in science, morals, politics, law, medicine, or any 
other department of human knowledge, has come up for recogni- 
tion, the first thing has not been to investigate and study, but 
rather to deny, ridicule, and abuse. Truth always wins its way, 
and it is right that it should be made to prove itself by so doing. 
It need ask no favor ; but it does seem strange that those who 
are chiefly to benefit by it if it be truth, and whom it can- 
not harm if it be other than truth, should exhaust all the 
resources of ingenuity and even malice in throwing obstacles 
in its path. 

It is of the utmost importance continually to bear in mind 
that all phenomena which actually occur are to be accounted for 
by natural law, and it is also to be remembered that one should 
first seek to account for them by known natural law. When that 
fails, and only when that fails, is it necessary to seek further 
law, as yet unknown. Even if the perusal of this book has not 
convinced him that such a thing as mind-reading does exist in 
certain cases, I want the reader to admit, for the purpose of 
argument, that it does, because it can be shown, with reasonable 
certainty, to account for some things which are commonly 
attributed to very different causes. To this end I shall relate 
certain events which happened many years' ago, w part of which 
I was, and all of which I saw." I might easily cite other cases, 
and for some reasons should prefer to do so, but the strength 
and value of this " exact relation " lies in its truth, and for that 
I, and others whom I shall name, can vouch. 

It will be remembered that the autumn of 1857 was a period 
of great excitement in commercial circles. Business had been 
done at high pressure, loans were greatly expanded, and money 
commanded very high rates of interest. At length the storm 
burst, hundreds of business houses were wrecked, industry came 
to a standstill, and merchandise of all sorts, failing to find a 
market, fell rapidly in value. It was naturally a time of great 
anxiety among all business men, and those who had stood up 
under the storm and carried safely through looked forward with 



1 88 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

no little interest to the story which their books would tell at the 
end of the year. My father was then at the head of the business 
house which still bears his name. The firm had then, as now, a 
branch house in Paris, presided over by a resident partner, who 
bought the goods and made payments for them. There was no 
Atlantic cable in operation then, and, in order to enable the 
Boston house to make up the firm's accounts to February i, 
the end of its business year, the Paris house made up its ac- 
counts to January i, and forwarded its statement by mail, so 
that it would reach Boston in ample time. It was near the 
middle of January, 1858, that my father, one bright Sunday 
morning, asked my eldest brother to go to the post office and 
get the mail, remarking that he expected to receive a letter from 
the Paris house, with the account-current for the six months last 
past. My brother did so, and soon returned with the letters, 
among which was the one expected. My father opened it at 
the breakfast-table, took out the account-current, and expressed 
his satisfaction with the figures. Soon after, the whole family 
went up-stairs, and nothing more was thought of the matter 
until about an hour later, when my father's partner, Mr. E., 
called, with the special object of ascertaining whether the 
looked-for account-current had been received. My father 
looked through his letters for the paper, ransacked his pockets, 
and made a general search for the document, but it could not 
be found. That he had taken it with him to the library, and 
that he had again looked at it there, he was absolutely positive ; 
but where it was he could not imagine. The household was 
called in, every possible place was searched, and some of us went 
even so far as to go out into the street to see if, by any chance, 
it had blown out of the window, which some one might possibly 
have opened for a moment. I remember distinctly that while I 
was going up-stairs on my knees, inspecting every stair thor- 
oughly, Mr. E. remarked to me that if I found that paper it 
would be the best paying job I ever did, and he added some- 
thing about a twenty-dollar gold piece. But, even with this 
stimulus, our efforts were unavailing, and finally the search was 
given up, and a telegram was sent to Halifax to intercept an out- 



MIND-READIXG AND BEYOND. 1 89 

going steamer, by which the Paris house was asked to send a 
duplicate of the missing paper. 

Three days later, while I was at work in a little attic room, 
which it pleased me to call my laboratory, I was called down 
into the parlor by my mother. I found there two ladies who, 
had just called. One was Mrs. E., the wife of my father's part- 
ner, and the other was her sister. The doors were closed, and 
my mother and I were informed, in great secrecy, that Mr. E. 
had worried very much over the loss of the account-current, 
that its unaccountable disappearance had disturbed him greatly, 
and that they, his wife and sister-in-law, without his knowledge, 
had determined to consult a clairvoyant. This they did, and 
from this consultation they came directly to see my mother. 
Whether the person consulted was a man or a woman I do not 
remember. Who it was I never knew. Their statement was 
that this person, without their saying anything more than that 
they were seeking something lost, told them that the article in 
question was a paper ; that it was important ; that its loss was 
annoying; that it was without intrinsic value; that it was in a 
very dark place ; that there was a very pungent odor of pine 
wood in the vicinity ; and that it would be found. It imme- 
diately occurred to my mother and myself that in a closet of the 
library there was, in one corner, a pile of pine wood, ready for 
use as kindling for the library fire, and we thought it possible 
that, by some accident, the paper had got into or behind it. It 
was agreed that nothing should be said, especially to my father, 
but that due search should be made. Fortunately for our plans 
it happened that my father went out of town that day to be gone 
over night. Late in the evening, when the rest of the household 
had retired, my mother and I went to the closet in question. 
Stick by stick I took out every particle of that wood, and then, 
candle in hand, and down on my knees, I went over every inch 
of that floor, but no document appeared. So I put the wood 
back again and went to bed, feeling that I was foolish to give 
any heed to what clairvoyants said, and very glad indeed that no 
mention of the subject had been made to my father. 

One week from that day my father was in his library, smoking 



I9O MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

an after-dinner cigar, and talking with Wendell Phillips, who 
had called for an hour's chat. I looked into the room for a 
moment, on my way up-stairs, and my father called to me to 
come in and give him the correct version of a quotation from 
the Biglow Papers, concerning whose exact wording he and 
Mr. Phillips disagreed. My version, given off-hand, was dif- 
ferent from either, so I was set to work to hunt up the volume 
and settle the point. But it was missing from the book-case, 
and my father, turning to my mother, handed her his bunch of 
keys, and asked her to go to his desk, which was very seldom 
used, unlock it, and get out his common-place book, in which, 
he said, the quotation was written down. My mother did so. I, 
anxious to see the quotation, was standing by her side. When 
the desk was opened there poured out a perfect flood of the 
odor of pine. On the common-place book rested a cardboard 
box filled with patent kindlings, in the shape of compressed 
blocks, each about an inch square, of resin or pitch and sawdust. 
This box and its contents neither my mother nor myself had 
ever seen before. Taking the book, my mother opened it to 
find the quotation, and there lay the missing paper. My father 
was dumbfounded, especially as on the first day, when the gen- 
eral search was in progress, my mother had asked him for his 
keys, that she might look through the desk. He replied that it 
was useless, that he had not been to his desk for weeks, and 
that he did not want his papers disturbed. 

I have not told this story for the sake of relating a marvel. 
My object is to show that it is capable of a solution compara- 
tively simple. Of course the fact was that my father had, 
'" mechanically," as we say, gone to his desk for some purpose, 
opened his common-place book, put the paper into it, closed, 
and put it down, put the box of kindlings on top of it, and then 
locked the desk. He had simply forgotten the circumstance 
absolutely. But he knew it, that is, his mind knew it. The 
impression was there. His brain contained all the facts in the 
case, and his alone. But, owing to a temporary lapse of memory, 
he failed to be cognizant of, or, as we say, to recall, things which, 
as a matter of fact, he knew. Now, admitting mind-reading as a 



MIXD-READING AND BEYOND. I9I 

possibility, we account for the statements of the " clairvoyant " 
by supposing that he, if it was a man, was able to read certain 
impressions on my father's mind better than my father could 
read them himself, without, however, having the least idea whose 
mind it was he was reading. Admitting mind-reading to have 
been proved to exist as a phenomenon, there is nothing marvel-* 
lous, mystical, or occult about this. It is simply a natural 
process going on under a natural law of which as yet we know 
but little. 

It will naturally be asked how it happened that the " clair- 
voyant's " mind reached and selected my father's so readily. 
It did not " happen " at all in the ordinary sense of the word. If 
the hypothesis be correct, and his mind did reach my father's, 
it was by a perfectly natural law, a law which we do not know. 
But let us see if we cannot get a hint of it. Both the ladies who 
called upon the clairvoyant knew, as a matter of fact, for they 
had been told by Mr. E., that the missing document had been 
in my father's hands, and that it was while in his keeping that 
it was lost. There is nothing to show that they thought of this 
while in the clairvoyant's presence. Whether they did or did 
not is immaterial. Their minds knew the fact, for it had been 
impressed upon their brains. Now, admitting mind-reading to 
be true, it is not a violent assumption to say that the clairvoy- 
ant's mind, without his knowledge, became cognizant of this 
impression, and then, by a law T of attraction which is as yet a 
sealed book to us all, sought and found the mind indicated. 
Thus an intermediate piece of mind-reading possibly helped to 
pave the way for the ultimate mind-reading. 

There is another hypothesis which may, to some, seem more 
reasonable. There is evidence which goes to show that a 
human mind may receive an impression unconsciously, and 
reflect it to another mind, also unconsciously. For instance, it 
is possible that the brain of Mr. E. received, all unconsciously 
to him, the impression which certainly was on my father's 
brain, but of whose existence my father was unaware. This 
image, unconsciously conveyed to his home by Mr. E., may have 
found a reflection in the brain of Mrs. E., and this reflection 



192 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

it was, possibly, that the clairvoyant perceived. This is not, 
to me, a very reasonable hypothesis, because Nature is apt to 
work in a very direct manner. But it has been suggested as 
possible. It is to be added that it is probable ; — I speak now 
on the basis of much recorded testimony, — I say it is probable, 
and I might say that it is almost certain, that had that clair- 
voyant been brought to my parents' house, and taken to the 
library, my father being present, he would at once have gone to 
the writing desk to seek for the lost paper, simply because he 
was an expert mind-reader, and would have had little difficulty 
in getting at the impression on my father's brain. 

In the whole range of physical experiment there is nothing 
more wonderful or more instructive to consider than the latent 
image on a photographic plate. A sheet of glass has upon its 
surface a him of gelatine, which carries in its substance a salt of 
silver, sensitive to light. When it suits our purpose we expose 
this, for a fractional part of a second to the light as it comes 
through a suitable lens, an image of the landscape for an 
infinitesimal period of time resting upon it. We take this 
plate — it may be an hour after or a year after — into a dark 
room, and by a faint light examine it carefully. Not the least 
change can we detect in it. It has the same even, creamy surface, 
and nothing is seen to indicate that a picture, full of intricate 
details, has ever rested upon its surface. But the picture, though 
unseen, is there. We have but to apply the proper chemicals, 
— that is, establish the 7'ight conditions, — and every detail of the 
landscape comes gradually out, and at length the picture is 
" developed." In that wonderful laboratory which we call the 
mind, impressions are constantly being received, and it may 
sometimes seem to happen that, for reasons unknown, develop- 
ment is deferred. But the images are there. Sometimes the 
photographer of landscapes neglects to develop his plates. 
They fall, perhaps, into the hands of another, whose curiosity 
is aroused, and he develops them. Are we not justified in 
believing that possibly the undeveloped and unconsciously held 
impression in one brain may sometimes be developed and dis- 
cerned by another ? This leads to the assumption that uncon- 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 93 

scious mind-reading may be common ; that is, that our brains 
may constantly be receiving reflections from other brains with- 
out our knowledge, and sometimes without our being cognizant 
of what they are after they are received. If this be true — it is 
only an hypothesis — we need for brain use just what every 
photographer needs for laboratory use — a good developer. 

Let it not be supposed that I claim to explain all clairvoyance 
by the hypothesis of mind-reading, direct or indirect. To do so 
would be to manifest a lamentable ignorance of what clairvoy- 
ance has accomplished. I have said that it is most reasonable 
and best always to account for phenomena by laws whose exist- 
ence we know, and whose operation we in some measure under- 
stand, when such phenomena can reasonably be so accounted 
for ; but this not only leaves us free, — it compels us to assume 
the existence of some other law, to us as yet unknown, when we 
are confronted with phenomena for which such law as we have 
at least some knowledge of, will not account. When a " sensi- 
tive " sees, or thinks he sees, objects which are hidden from his 
physical sight, in cases where the thing seen is known, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, to another person, it may be that the 
impression of sight is but that produced by reflection or projec- 
tion from the mind of the other person ; but, in cases where the 
thing seen is absolutely unknown to any human being, this 
hypothesis is not sufficient, and we are in duty bound, as honest 
investigators, to seek for an hypothesis that will. For just so 
surely as this phenomenon can be proved to have occurred — 
and it most certainly can — just so sure is it that its occurrence 
is governed by a natural law which, by experiment, study, and 
thought, we shall in time get at. 

Some may be curious to ask what thing can exist whose exist- 
ence is unknown to any human being, so that its discovery by 
clairvoyance would be a phenomenon coming under the second 
head. There may be many, but it will be sufficient to say that 
there have been cases where persons claimed, by clairvoyance, 
to be cognizant of what was going on inside of human bodies, 
giving correct diagnoses of obscure and unsuspected difficulties, 
which, on proper examination, were proved to exist, although 



194 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

their existence was stoutly denied, because not believed by the 
patient. In some cases the statements made by such " clair- 
voyants " have been disbelieved and ridiculed until after death, 
when the dissecting-knife has proved their truth. Let it not be 
supposed from this that I believe such a power at all common, 
or that any considerable number of those who claim it really 
possess it. On the contrary, it is just in this line that many 
charlatans practise upon the ignorance and credulity of the pub- 
lic. What I do say is, that such such cases have occurred, that 
they are too exact and precise in their details to be classed as 
coincidences, and that they challenge and justly claim investi- 
gation, to the end that this faculty may be used for the good 
of mankind, and that those who falsely claim to possess it may 
be branded as impostors, and the public put on their guard 
against them. 

It is to be observed that there are two distinct phases of mind- 
reading, into which all cases divide themselves. In the one the 
agent, or person whose mind is read, is active, seeking to con- 
centrate his thoughts, and making an effort of the w r ill to project 
them upon the mind of the percipient, who is simply seeking to 
be passive and receptive. In the other it is the percipient whose 
mind is active. His mind is seeking for, and striving to get at, 
what is in the mind of the agent, who is entirely passive. 
Moreover, whatever his mind may know about it, he is generally 
unconscious that any effort is being made by another mind to 
learn what his contains. I say "generally," because some per- 
sons, extremely sensitive, say that a peculiar feeling comes over 
them when a percipient is seeking, even at a distance, to obtain 
an impression of their thoughts. 

It is a question whether mind-reading, in all its forms and 
phases, — mesmerism, clairvoyance, and other allied phenomena 
bearing names which have no place in scientific nomenclature, — 
are not all, like static, magnetic, and galvanic electricity, differ- 
ent forms of the same force. They have been named hap- 
hazard, and phenomena are classed under these arbitrary heads 
according to the inclination and knowledge of different experi- 
menters. It is certain that they are closely allied, just as it is 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 1 95 

certain that they overlap one another, so that there is no clearly 
defined line of demarcation between them, and it is not alto- 
gether improbable that when, by sufficient study, we have mas- 
tered them, we shall find that they all exist under the operation 
of one great natural law. 

There are those who deny the reality of mesmerism or hyp- 
notism. They are uninstructed persons, — uninstructed in this 
matter, I mean. Their denial is unimportant to those who have 
studied the subject, and their opinion, based on ignorance, is as 
valueless as mine on the question of a Sanskrit root. To those 
who have taken the pains to inform themselves, experiment for 
the purpose of establishing the fact of mesmerism is as needless 
as for physicians to cut up the living body to establish the 
known fact that the blood circulates. Experiment for the pur- 
pose of studying the phenomenon they consider of the highest 
value, but, so far as the fact is concerned, they do not need to waste 
time to learn what they absolutely know. With the long array 
of recorded experiments which the books contain, experiments 
conducted by men of known ability and unquestioned integrity, 
it seems like " wasteful and ridiculous excess " to cite cases that 
have come under my own eye ; but I may briefly say, that on one 
occasion, when I half suspected that the "subject" was pre- 
tending to think that the liquid which I gave him to smell was 
cologne, when it w 7 as really water, I substituted strong aqua 
ammonia, telling him, as before, that it was cologne. He drenched 
his handkerchief in it, and held it to his nostrils, apparently with 
great satisfaction. I know that what little of the fumes came to 
mine brought water to my eyes, and gave me a choking sensation, 
and I was convinced that in suspecting him of shamming I had 
done him a great injustice. After experiences such as this, 
insignificant compared with the mass of recorded testimony 
from authorities which no fair-minded man can question, if he 
will but take the pains to examine it, — no one can deny the 
reality of mesmerism any more than he can deny that water is 
the result of the chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen, 
a fact universally admitted, but which comparatively few have 
ever seen experimentally demonstrated. They believe it to be 



I96 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

true because its truth has been certified to them by competent 
authority. An examination of the records will show that the 
truth of the phenomena of mesmerism have been certified to by 
authority which, to my mind, is amply competent, and among 
instructed persons it is a matter of common knowledge. 

It will naturally be asked what good is expected to grow out 
of the study of these so-called " occult " phenomena. The gen- 
eral answer is that nothing but good can come out of the study 
of nature. It is something to free men's minds from delusion 
as to the supernatural. It is the province of man to study 
Nature in all her moods and phases, and discover her laws. The 
special answer in the case of mesmerism is that it is a pheno- 
menon of the mind, the least understood and most important 
factor in man's personality. In countless well-authenticated 
cases it has done important medical service by enabling the 
physician to reach the body through the brain, and it is held by 
many persons of wide acquaintance with the subject that it con- 
tains the key to the correct understanding and treatment of the 
most terrible of all diseases, insanity. But before it can be 
safely used, it must be closely and exhaustively studied, lest by 
wrong use, like all true remedies, it do more harm than good. 
If it be objected that only comparatively few persons can be 
influenced in this way, and that it is senseless to study out the 
proper use of a force or remedy which can only be used in rare 
and exceptional cases, the answer is that, until we know much 
more about it than is now known, we are not in a position to say 
how widely it may or may not be used. There is reason to 
believe that more or less of what is, to say the least, closely 
allied to mesmerism, is practised very generally all the time, for 
the most part unconsciously, and for all sorts of purposes. Is it 
not worth the study to ascertain just what this is, both that it may 
be used for proper purposes, and that those more or less subject 
to such influences may know how to detect and guard against 
them when they are used, even unconsciously, for purposes not 
proper; that is, where a person is induced, by what we call 
superior will-power, to do a thing which he knows perfectly well 
it is not for his interest to do. 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. IQ7 

I mention this unconscious use of mesmeric influence because 
I believe it to be far more frequent than is generally supposed ; 
far more frequent, indeed, than its conscious or even intentional 
use. A case in point came within my experience not long since. 
A travelling salesman, a "drummer," was seeking to sell certain 
goods to a customer. His arguments were by no means potent, 
his command of language was very limited, but he was an ear- 
nest man, and, saying the same thing over and over again, kept 
his eyes fixed on his customer. The latter at first declined to 
purchase, but the drummer clung to him. What he said was 
not enough in itself to have any effect, but his manner, his 
earnestness, and, above all, his fixed gaze, did the business in 
time. The customer simply wilted, and consented. Now there 
was nothing remarkable in this. It happens every day; but I, 
who have become somewhat familiar with the appearance of 
subjects when partially or wholly under mesmeric influence, felt 
convinced that I recognized it in the case of this customer. The 
expression of his face, especially about the eyes, changed com- 
pletely ; he grew nervous and uneasy, and when he finally con- 
sented to take the goods, it was as though he realized that he 
did not need them, and that he took them to rid himself of his 
tormentor. Is it not barely possible that it will pay to investi- 
gate mesmerism and all of its belongings, if for no other purpose 
than to ascertain what can be done to resist such influences ? 

A clergyman of the Church of England recently told me that 
once, when the community in which he then resided had been 
greatly disturbed by the circulation of a pamphlet by Bradlaugh, 
in which it was asserted that man had no soul, he temporarily 
added to the consternation by preaching a sermon in which he 
coincided with Bradlaugh's statement, adding, however, by way 
of explanation, that the soul and the man were identical, and 
that while it was true that the man, or the soul, whichever you 
choose to call it, had a body, it was an absurd confusion of 
terms to say that man, who was nothing if not a soul, had a 
soul. Of course it was in one sense a play upon words, but to 
my mind a justifiable one. We all know that the body dies. 
Pretty nearly all of us believe that the entity which we call the 



I98 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

soul or the spirit — in a word, the man himself — does not die. We 
believe that, when the body dies, dissolution takes place, that is, 
that the soul, or the spirit, or the man himself, is freed from the 
body and continues to live as an entity. There is nothing start- 
ling, nothing new, nothing surprising in this belief. It is taught 
in every family circle, in every Sunday school, in every church 
of every Christian sect throughout the whole civilized world. It 
is the belief of by far the greater part of what we presume to 
call the uncivilized world. It is the basis of Christian hope and 
Christian faith, and to the minds of the vast majority of man- 
kind it appears reasonable and natural. I have been careful to 
say that while we know the death of the body to be actual, we 
can only say that we believe the life of the individual to continue. 
But this belief is so strong that it may be assumed as a fact, at 
least for purposes of argument. We are further taught that when 
the spirit (we may as well call the disembodied personality by 
this commonly accepted term, understanding that it includes all 
that there is of a man save the material body) leaves the body, 
it ascends. It is hardly to be supposed that, in this enlightened 
age, this statement is to be taken literally in the sense of an 
upwa?-d movement, a movement in a direction opposite to that 
in which the centre of the earth lies. Any such literal construc- 
tion would imply that the thousands of spirits which are daily 
released from the bodies which they have inhabited go sailing 
off into endless space on divergent lines, never to meet. Clearly 
the literal interpretation will not do. It is more reasonable to 
suppose that, in saying that, the spirit on being released ascends, 
we mean that it passes to a higher state, a better, freer, and 
more untrammelled condition, — in a word, that it enters upon 
and is born into that state of existence that we call " spiritual." 
To suppose that it ceases to have thought is revolting. To sup- 
pose that man, on passing out of his body, ceases to have any 
memory of mundane things, is not absolutely repugnant to any 
facts within common knowledge, but it is not a pleasant idea to 
contemplate. If, when dissolution takes place, all that expe- 
rience has taught him, all the affections that he has formed, all 
the friends that he has made, all the hopes and aspirations of 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. I99 

his heart for those near and dear to him, are to be blotted from 
his memory, what will he be, what can he be, but a hopeless 
disappointment to those he leaves behind, when their time comes 
and they join him ? Nay, if all antecedent recollection is to be 
blotted from the pages of their memory likewise, if all their 
affections and friendships die when their bodies die, they must 
meet as strangers those w T ho went before, to whom during exist- 
ence in the body they were bound by the closest ties of love and 
friendship. This is hardly the proposition to put before the 
mother who has lost her child, the wife who has lost her hus- 
band. No, if we are to assume that all that there is of man save 
his body lives after dissolution, we are forced, as it seems to me, 
to assume that he carries with him all his knowledge, all his 
experience, all his thought, — in a word, all his recollection. 

And now comes the great question, Can man, having passed 
from the body, and entered upon a new phase of existence, 
communicate his thoughts to those who yet remain in the body, 
and receive impressions from them. This is the question of 
questions, that which hundreds of thousands of human minds 
are to-day considering, which many have solved to their own 
satisfaction, — some in one way and some in another. I do not 
presume to solve it, but it may be a help to others, as it has 
been to me, to consider certain suggestions which have the merit 
of being simple, and which not a few have thought reasonable. 
The first question which comes up for consideration is, "Where 
are these disembodied spirits ? " We do not know. Education 
and common belief leads us to locate them "in heaven above," 
but this phrase, except it be taken figuratively, conveys no clear 
idea of locality. In fact it means, taken literally, everywhere 
except on this planet. Now in cases where we have no exact 
information I take it that the most reasonable assumption is to 
be preferred ; and to my mind the most reasonable assumption is 
that the spirits of those who have ceased to inhabit earthly 
bodies are right here. It does not follow from this, necessarily, 
that they can see us or our surroundings, any more than we can 
see them or their surroundings. Nay, it does not even follow 
that they are aware even of our presence in any way. It may be 



200 MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 

that in some way not known we sometimes sense their presence, 
without the aid of either eye or ear, or any of our physical organs 
of sensation, and just so it may be that they sometimes sense 
our presence, even though possessing no material organs of 
sensation. I speak of these things as possibilities only, but to 
me they appear not unreasonable possibilities. Where these 
spirits are, whether they are all assembled together, or whether 
they are dispersed through space, is entirely immaterial to the 
argument. It is a matter of secondary importance altogether. 

Admitting that one human mind, in the body, can in certain 
cases so project its thoughts as to impress them upon another 
human mind, also in the body — and this, upon the evidence 
submitted in this volume I confidently assert — it does not to 
me seem a violent assumption to say that the disembodied 
mind, possessing everything that it ever had except the body, 
can in certain cases project its thoughts upon minds still in the 
body, — in other words, impress it with ideas and thoughts for- 
eign to itself. I cannot see why a human mind possessing this 
power while in the body — a power purely mental — should not 
possess it to even a greater degree when the body is cast aside, 
and all the duties which the body imposes upon the mind are 
things of the past, leaving it comparatively untrammelled. 
So long as what we call life lasts, the mind must take cog 
nizance of every impression which comes to it through the 
various organs of sensation. These come in endless succession 
from the instant of birth to the instant of dissolution, and they 
supply the mind with continuous occupation. But when the 
body dies, these sensations cease to occupy the mind's attention, 
it has so much the less to do, and consequently it is more free to 
engage in operations purely mental, and among these may be 
thought-projection upon other minds, embodied or disembodied. 

Let us now come back to a suggestion which I have made 
many times in the course of this chapter, but which cannot be 
too often repeated, If the embodied mind can, in certain cases, 
communicate and project its thoughts upon another human 
mind, — and I assert that it can, — it does so by virtue of and 
under a natural law. In the same way, if the disembodied mind 



MIND-READING AND BEYOND. 201 

can communicate and project its thoughts upon the embodied 
mind — I have offered no proof of this, and hence do not assert 
it — it does it under the same law, for the mind no longer in the 
body is as much a part of Nature as ever, — it cannot pass be- 
yond Nature. Hence such thought projection or impression is 
not in any sense supernatural, it is nothing to be shunned, it is 
nothing to be feared. If it occurs — and this is yet to be proved 
— it is a most important, valuable, attractive, and interesting 
thing to investigate. To say that it does not admit of investi- 
gation is absurd. 

I have already exceeded the limits prescribed for this volume. 
I have given in detail the most authentic and reliable evidence 
attainable concerning the existence of mind-reading, and I sub- 
mit that it is sufficient to establish it as a tact. I have touched 
upon mesmerism, clairvoyance, and other phenomena which lie 
"beyond " mind-reading, and have thus, at least in part, redeemed 
the promise of my book's title. Concerning these there are 
many proofs to be adduced, much argument to be submitted. 
These I shall hope to present in a later volume. Meantime I 
ask the reader to entertain no proposition that does not appeal 
to his reason, to believe nothing that is not proved, and at the 
same time I ask him to banish all prejudice from his mind, and 
to remember that superstition is, and always has been, a stum- 
bling-block in the path of human progress. 

As an investigator anxious to learn from the experience of 
others, I ask that any of my readers who have within their 
knowledge well-authenticated cases of the occurrence of any of 
these phenomena will, if they find it agreeable and convenient, 
communicate them to me. It is not necessary that the names 
of all the parties concerned be given, although, where there is 
no objection, that is immensely preferable. What is absolutely 
essential is that the facts be attested by the full name and 
address of one or more persons who know them of their own 
knowledge. Any such communication will reach me most 
speedily if sent to the care of the publishers of this volume, 
Messrs. Lee and Shepard, Boston. 



LEE AND SHEPARD'S HANDBOOKS, 



ARE YOU INTERESTED IN BUGS? 

INSECTS ; How to Catch and how to Prepare them for 

the Cabinet. Comprising a Manual of Instruction for the 
Field Naturalist. By Walter P. Manton. Illustrated. Cloth, 
50 cents. 
" Nothing essential is omitted : every boy who has any taste for natu- 
ral history should have this neat little volume. Tbe many " Agassiz 
Clubs" which have sprung up amid tbe youth of the country, should 
add it to their libraries." — Chicago Advance. 

"OF INESTIMABLE VALUE TO YOUNG BOTANISTS." 

Rural Xe w-Yo rk er. 
FIELD BOTANY. A Handbook for the Collector. Containing In- 
structions for Gathering and Preserving Plants, aud the Formation 
of a Herbarium. Also Complete Instructions in Leaf Photogra- 
phy, Plant Printing, and the Skeletonizing of Leaves. By Wal- 
ter P. Manton. Illustrated. 50 cents. 
" A most valuable companion. The amount of information conveyed 
in the small compass is surprising." — Demoresfs Monthly. 

"EVERY NATURALIST OUGHT TO HAVE A COPY FOR IMME- 
DIATE USE." 

TAXIDERMY WITHOUT A TEACHER. Comprising a 
Complete Manual of Instruction for Preparing and Preserving 
Birds, Animals, and Fishes; with a Chapter on Hunting and Hy- 
giene; together with Instructions for Preserving Eggs and Making 
Skeletons, and a number of valuable Recipes. By Walter P. 
Manton. Illustrated. 50 cents. 
"We would be glad if all teachers would take this little book, study 

it faithfully, become interested themselves, and interest their pupils in 

this wonderful art." — Practiced Teacher. 

HOW TO ENLARGE THE ANT TO THE SIZE OF AN ELE- 
PHANT. 
BEGINNINGS WITH THE MICROSCOPE. A Working 
Handbook, containing simple Instructions in the Art and Method 
of using the Microscope and preparing Objects for Examination. 
By Walter P. Manton, M.D. Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents. 
Uniform with the author's "Handbooks of Xatural History," and 
equally valuable. 

PARLEZ VOUS FRANCAIS? 
BROKEN ENGLISH. A Frenchman's Struggles with the English 
Language. By Professor E. C. Dubois, author of " The French 
Teacher." Cloth, 50 ceuts; cheap edition, paper, 30 cents. 
The Professor's famous lecture, delivered all over the country. Amus- 
ing as a narrative, instructive as a handbook of French conversation. 

AN EMERGENCY HANDBOOK. 

WHAT IS TO BE DONE. A Handbook for the Nursery, with 

useful Hints for Children and Adults. By Robert B. Dixon, 

M.D. Small 4to. Cloth, 50 cents. 

Dr. Dixon has produced a work that will be gladly welcomed by 

parents. His " remedies " are indorsed by many prominent medical men. 



Sold by all booksellers, or sent by mail, jtostpaid, on receipt of piHce, 

LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 



LEE AND SHEPARD'S HANDBOOKS. 



"JUST AS THE TWIG IS BENT, THE TREE'S INCLINED' 

LESSONS ON MANNERS. For home and school use. A 
Manual by Edith E. Wiggin. Cloth, 50 cents ; school edition, 
boards, 30 cents net. 
This little book is being rapidly introduced into schools as a text-book. 

SHOWS WHY THE WINDS BLOW. 

WHIRLWINDS, CYCLONES, AND TORNADOES. By 
Prof. W. M. Davis of Harvard University. Illustrated. 50 cents. 
The cyclones of our great West, the whirlwinds of the desert, every 
tiling in the shape of storms, scientifically and popularly treated. 

"THIS VOLUME IS SUBLIME POETRY." 

THE STARS AND THE EARTH; or, Thoughts upon 

Space, Time, and Eternity. With an Introduction by 

Thomas Hill, D.D., LL.D., late President of Harvard University. 

Cloth. 50 cents. 

"It cannot but be valuable to the student of science as well as to the 

professors of religion, and tends to bring them closer together, and 

reconcile them." — Potter's Monthly. 

KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DRINKING. 

HANI BOOK OF WATER ANALYSIS. By Dr. George 
L Austin. Cloth. 50 cents. 
" It condenses iuto fifty pages what one would have to wander through 
a small hemical library to find. We commend the book as worthy of a 
wide cir elation. " — Independent. 

EVERY LADY HER OWN FLORIST. 

THE 1? \RLOR GARDENER. A Treatise on the House-Culture 
cl Ornamental Plants. Translated from the French, and adapted 
t< American use. By Cornelia J. Randolph. With eleven 
i Justrative cuts. 50 cents. 
Tt <x*Kains minute directions for the " mautel-piece garden," the 
" etcfii re garden," the " flower-stand garden," the " portable green- 
house," the "house-aquarium," the garden upon the balcony, the ter- 
rac< -,nd the double window, besides describing many curious and 
interesting experiments in grafting. 

"HELLO, CENTRAL!" 
Tl^ TELEPHONE. An Account of the Phenomena of Electricity, 
Magnetism, and Sound, as involved in its action, with directions for 
making a Speaking-Telephone. By Professor A. E. Dolbear of 
Tufts College. 16mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents. 
"An interesting little book upon this most fascinating subject, which 
V treated in a very clear and methodical way. First we have a thorough 
review of the discoveries in electricity, then of magnetism, then of those 
*L the study of sound, — pitch, velocity, timbre, tone, resonauee, sym- 
pathetic vibrations, etc. From these the telephone is reached, and by 
them in a measure explained." — Hartford Courant. 



Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price* 

LEE & SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston. 



LEE AND SHEPARD'S HANDBOOKS. 



SHORT-HAND WITHOUT A MASTER. 

HANDBOOK OF UNIVERSAL PHONOGRAPHY; or, 
Short-hand by the " Allen Method. " A self-instructor, 
whereby more speed than long hand writing is gained at the first 
lesson, and additional speed at each subsequent lesson. By G. Gr. 
Allen, Principal of the Allen Stenographic Institute, Boston. 
50 cents. 
"By this method one can, in an hour a day for two or three months, 

become so expert as to report a lecture verbatim." 

THE STUDY OF GEOGRAPHY MADE PRACTICAL. 
HANDBOOK OF THE EARTH. Natural methods in geog- 
raphy. By Louisa Parsons Hopkins, Teacher of Normal 
Methods iu the Swain Free School, New Bedford. 50 cents. 
The work is designed for the use of teachers and normal-school classes 
as a review and generalization of geographical facts, and for general 
readers as a guide to right methods of study and instruction. 

DAILY FOOD FOR THE MIND. 
PRONOUNCING HANDBOOK of 3,000 words often mispro- 
nounced, and of words as to which a choice of pronunciation is 
allowed. By Richard Soule and Loomis J. Campbell. 50 cts. 
" This book can be earned in a gentleman's vest-pocket, or tucked in a 
lady's belt, and we wish several hundred thousand copies might thus be 
disposed of, with a view to daily consultation." — Corigregationaliat. 

ABOUT 40,000 SYNONYMOUS WORDS. 

HANDBOOK OP ENGLISH SYNONYMS, with an appen- 
dix showing the correct use of prepositions, also a collection of 
foreign phrases. By Loomis J. Campbell. Cloth. 50 cents. 
" Clearly printed, well arranged, adapted to help any one who writes 
much to enrich his vocabulary, vary his expressions, and secure accu- 
racy in conveying his thoughts." — Boston Journal. 

"A BOOK OF INCALCULABLE VALUE." 

HANDBOOK OF CONVERSATION. Its Faults and its 
Graces. Compiled by Andrew P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D. 
Comprising: 1. Dr. Peabody's Lecture. 2. Mr. Trench's Lecture. 

3. Mr. Perry G-wynn's "A Word to the Wise; or, Hints on the 
Current Improprieties of Expression in Writing and Speaking." 

4. Mistakes and Improprieties in Speaking and Writing Corrected. 
Cloth. 50 cents. 

" It is worth owning, and ought to be studied by many who heedlessly 
misuse their mother tongue." — Boston Beacon, 

"WE COMMEND IT HIGHLY." - Chicago Herald. 

HINTS AND HELPS for those who Write, Print, or 
Read. By Benjamin Drew, Proof-reader. 50 cents. 
" The information is imparted in a very lively and remembering way." 
— Boston Commonwealth. 



Sold by all booksellers, and sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, 

LEE & SHEPARD, Publisher? Boston. 



H 132 82 




.S\ : 









c°*.C^-% >*.t^>v >\.^.% , 




Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Nov. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

AV 9 l9 9^ O A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

^&/lffi/*2^ ^ 1 1 1 Thomson Park Driv e 

<^» Cranberry Township, RA 16066 

(724)779-2111 








' ** 













^o*. ., 



»• » ^ -J 













LIBRARY OF 
I II in in 



CONGRESS 



°013 522 004 8 



